Favorite Fig Bread (Fig Cake) Recipe (2024)

This moist, sweet, and flavorful homemade fig bread recipe is a fall favorite! Also known as fig cake, it's loaded with chunks of fresh figs, chopped walnuts, and is spiced with cardamom and cinnamon. If you have leftover figs, be sure to try my candied figs recipe as well!

This moist and irresistible fig bread recipe is one of my most sought after recipes! Some of my friends refer to it as fig bread, while others call it fig cake. Whatever you call it, you'll agree that it's absolutely delicious!

🧐 Why This Recipe Works

• This fig cake recipe is one of the easiest recipes you'll ever make. No need to use a stand mixer, or use a bunch of bowls that leave you with a huge mess to clean up afterward.
• Baking fig bread is as easy as mixing the dry ingredients in one bowl and the wet ingredients in another. After that, pop it in the oven and enjoy the heavenly aroma!
• The spices used in this bread really compliment each other and give it a unique taste that you'll be craving all year long.
• Fig bread leftovers freezes well so you can enjoy your fig cake when figs are no longer in season.

🔖 Recipe Ingredients & Substitutions

• Figs: Fresh or frozen figs are preferred. If you absolutely can't get figs, you can rehydrate dried figs in hot water then squeeze out excess moisture. Another option is to use one 8 ounce jar of fig preserves or jam. If you do that, you may need to reduce the amount of sugar.
• Flour: All-purpose flour or a combination of whole wheat flour and all purpose flour.
• Sugar: Granulated sugar, or a combination of granulated sugar and brown sugar.
• Spices: Cardamon, cinnamon, cloves, and freshly ground nutmeg. If you don't have all the spices, you can skip one or two of them but you want the bread to have a mixture of these warming spices.
• Nuts: Either walnuts or pecans can be added. May leave out if you have nut allergies.

🍞 How to Make This Fig Bread Recipe

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F

Step 1: Mix dry ingredients (flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder, ground cloves, ground nutmeg, cardamom, cinnamon, and sea salt) in a large bowl until combined.

Step 2: Place the walnuts in a ziplock bag and pound with a mallet until crushed. Another option is to use a small food processor.

Step 3: Fold the walnuts in with the dry ingredients.

Pro Tip: Folding the walnuts into the flour coats them with flour and keeps them from sinking to the bottom of the fig bread.

Step 4: In a medium bowl, whisk the wet ingredients (oil, milk, eggs, and vanilla and chopped figs).

Step 5: Fold wet ingredients into the flour mixture and stir just until incorporated. Pour batter into a greased and floured bundt pan, or two loaf pans.

Tip: If using frozen figs, make sure they are defrosted and drained first so that you don't have excessive liquid in you fig bread, which would cause it to sink in the middle.

Step 6: Bake in the oven, on the middle rack, for approximately one hour for a bundt pan. If using loaf pans, bake for approximately 45 minutes or until golden brown.

Pro Tip: Since oven temperatures vary, test with a toothpick to make sure it's cooked all the way through.

Step 7: Cool the fig bread for approximately 10 minutes before removing it from the pan. Cool on wire racks completely before slicing it.

🤷🏻‍♀️ Recipe FAQs

👩🏼‍🍳 Pro Tips

• The figs should be chopped coarsely instead of ground. We want big chunks of figs in the bread!
• During fig season, I chop the figs and add them to small ziplock bags in one cup portions. I then keep them in the freezer to use throughout the year when I'm craving fig bread.
• You can also make this fig bread recipe by replacing one of the eggs with half of a ripe banana. It makes an even moister cake/bread.
• Store the fig bread in an airtight container in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze for longer storage.

Figs, Gardening, and Good Neighbors

I'd like to dedicate this recipe to my next-door neighbor, the late Chuck Frazier. Chuck recently passed away at the age of 83.

It was while I was visiting my family in Chicago, so I didn't get to say goodbye. He and I shared the love of figs, gardening, and spicy food. Figs will forever remind me of Chuck!

Sometimes you thank God for placing certain people in your life, Chuck Frasier was one of those people in my life. Chuck was a Korean War/Vietnam War Veteran.

Although we had serving in the Navy in common, it was the fig tree in his front yard that brought us together.

I once admired the fig tree in his front yard and mentioned that I loved figs. After that, Chuck would always invite me to pick figs from his tree when they ripened in late Summer.

Chuck shared his figs with me, and I repaid him with this fig cake,strawberry fig jam, fig newtons, and fig preserves.

Things You Find Out at a Funeral

Why is it that you can live next door to someone for years and still not know certain things about them? That is until you attend their funeral.

Like the fact that Chuck was born in a train box cart. Or that he and his lovely wife, Shirley, fostered 200 children over the years!

Chuck loved Jesus, and never met a stranger. His favorite pastime was tending to his garden. When I would hear him in the garden (over our shared fence), I'd stand on a chair so that we could chat.

As I sit outside writing this post, I realize that the sound I hear coming from his yard is not Chuck; that makes me really sad.

Yet, I know I'll see him again one day, where I'm sure he'll take me around and show me his beautiful, heavenly garden!

🍽 More Quick Breads to Try

• moist pumpkin bread
• huckleberry banana bread
• persimmon bread with cream cheese frosting

If you enjoyed this fig bread recipe, be sure to check out these other fig recipes too!

📖 Recipe