Fig Bars

Horrible! Pastry was way too thick. It broke when rolled. Had to cook an extra 20 minutes! The instructions said to add the milk and vanilla but there was no vanilla in the list of ingredients and no listed amount to use. What a mess!

I have made this twice so far. I think that this is a good starting point for the recipe, but I felt that there were some additions and adjustments that could, and should, be made. The fig filling is way too sweet for my liking. I ended up adjusting this by adding a slight amount of salt, cinnamon, cardamom, and cayenne pepper. I also ended up adding a few flakes of coarse salt to the top of the bars prior to baking. I did not have lemons on hand, but I truly believe that some lemon zest and a bit of juice would help make the filling very delicious. The acidity would be a nice balance even if you cut the amount of sugar you add into the filling.

I was very disappointed with the outcome of these bars. Not at all like the bars I remember as a child. I found the dough difficult to work with. It was gooey and slimy even after baking and much too sweet. I won’t make them again.

I used 2 cups of fresh frozen figs mixed with 1/3 cup of sugar. cooked on low for a half hour or until mixture was thick and gooey. then added 1/2 treaspoon of vanilla and some grated nutmeg and clove. mixed the flour ( 1cup whole wheat and 3/4 cup white) with 1/3 cup of sugar and other dry ingredients then add 1/4 butter and 1/4 oil that was melted along with 1 to 4 T of milk and stirred together like i was making an oil pie crust. (it was slightly wetter then my pie crust usually is). put in fridge for 1 hour . rolled half into a 14 inch by 5 in rectangle then put filling down the middle and folded over the sides to encase the filling, put seem side down on cookie sheet that was lined with a baking sheet. i used wax paper and plastic wrap to roll out dough otherwise it stuck to rolling pin. IT WAS DELICIOUS!!!

I think a few people should have rated the recipe as it deserved then posted their own recipe.

These were pretty good.

Really delicious, but more like candy than cookies. Seems like way too much butter to me. I followed the recipe, except I cut the butter into the dry ingredients, then added the milk and vanilla. The dough stuck together pretty well.

Delicious recipe! I took the advice of another comment to add an egg and vanilla to the dough (I used 3/4 C all purpose and 1 C whole wheat flour). I rolled the dough and cut two long, 4 inch wide rectangles and out the filling down the middle, closing the dough in the center once baked I cut them into individual servings. Family approves!

Have to make sure that you make 2 doughs just in case. Mine was not big enough. However, good fig bars! Obviously when they tell you vanilla, I put 1 tsp! Not tablespoon!

It didn’t list all of the ingredients. Well take a photo when it comes out.

We tried this and found that the ingredient list is missing vanilla, 1 egg, and about 1/4 cup of milk. It was delicious when we got done, so we give it 4 stars

I added 1 tsp of vanilla as indicated by another reviewer and I did blend my still tough dried figs in a food processor even after simmering for the time called for in this recipe. For my next batch I will indeed, cut my dry mix sugar down to 3/4 cup, as the filling is ample sweet. I feel less sugar on the outer crust will mimic the store-bought even more so. We’ll see!

When I think of fig bars I envision mostly fig mixture with a thin pastry crust. So I saw no need to add eggs. Thanks to the reviewers that suggested putting together the dough as you would a pie crust – dry ingredients, then cutting in the (cold) butter (i use a food processor) and finally adding the liquid. Dough was too crumbly so I added more milk. It was not sticky. I rolled the dough between parchment paper, transferred it to the pan then peeled away the parchment paper. they came out great! Thanks for a tasty recipe – and to the reviewers who tweaked the instructions!

Thankfully I read the reviews before I started making these. I followed a lot of MaryMaybe’s suggestions. I added an extra tablespoon of milk, 1 egg and a tablespoon of vanilla to the dough part. I ended up refrigerating it for about 20 hours. It wasn’t planned, but it definitely helped with making the dough tougher and easier to work with. I didn’t have any problems with it falling apart. I didn’t have any self-rising flour so I used regular flower with a little bit of yeast. Be careful, these things double in size in the oven!!! I used fresh figs, used about 1/3c water, added the other filling ingredients and let it simmer for an hour. I also added allspice and cinnamon to the filling and that turned out great! Overall, I absolutely loved how the cookies came out and will definitely make these again. After sampling how the dough and filling was turning out, I ended up doubling it at the last minute. I am VERY glad I did that! Doubling the recipe went great and I didn’t have any issues. We had about 1/2c of filling leftover and my husband had no problems eating it on toast. This will be a recipe I will make again.

Tried this recipe with much trepidation as did others but was encouraged that everyone said they tasted great. And they do! However there were errors made in the recipe. First, other than omitting vanilla from the ingredient list, which I didn’t use, the ingredient list is correct. However, the mixing instructions should have been more like a pastry mix rather than a cake mix. I didn’t cream the butter and sugar. I added the sugar to the other dry ingredients then cut in the butter just as I would for pie pastry. Then I added the milk. I did have to add a tablespoon extra milk but that kind of variant occurs with any pastry recipe according to the humidity of the flour so I didn’t think anything of that. After mixing with a fork, I continued mixing the dough with my hands until it came together, exactly like pie pastry. Then I rolled half out, spread with the fig filling, covered with the other half of rolled out pastry and pinched the edges. Turned out great!

This is truly a recipe for creatives and problem solvers. My mother in law puts up jars of figs from her tree. She parboils them with sugar water and freezes the jars so all I had to do for filling was thaw and cook down. I decided to add egg white along with the milk about 4 TBLS of milk and egg white all together. Trying to bring a healthy aspect to baking I used finely ground oat bran as part of the flour and coconut oil as half of the butter and coconut sugar and a bit of rice syrup as the sugar. I noticed after mixing it all together it had a cake batter consistency though after the hour in the fridge it was firmed up. I took half the dough made a ball and flattened it and put it in the bottom of the 9×13 dish covered it with wax paper and rolled it out with a straight sided glass and lifted off the paper. Worked perfectly, I scraped off any dough on the paper and filled thin places. After putting the filling in over that I took the other half of the dough made a ball flattened it and rolled it between two pieces of wax paper, put it in the freezer for 10 minutes. This worked OK on the end that was thicker but not well at all on the end I had rolled out thinner. After scraping dough off the paper and laying it on the filling I was 1/3 short of covering the whole pan so I made another 1/3 of dough and in it’s cake batter consistency I just poured it on, much easier and spreadable. Maybe the bottom layer of dough does need to be cold so the filling doesnt mix in. Yummy!

I used fresh figs off our tree, using the review for 3 cups figs, 1 cup sugar, 1/4 cup water, dash all spice & cinnamon. After simmering nearly an hour, the pan was about dry so added another 1/8c water. Tried to purée the figs in the food processor, but they were a thick candy consistency. This did not make enough filling for the recipe, so next time will use 4c fresh figs, purée first before simmering. To the dough I added 1 egg & 1/2 ts vanilla per reviews and it turned out perfect!

Perhaps the worst recipe I’ve ever tried! There were several missing ingredients, including egg(s) to make the dough hold together. The instructions were so unclear that if you’ve never made a jam/preserve type filling such as this as I hadn’t, you may end up with burnt filling and a ruined pot (I actually had to throw my pot away) as I kept cooking the filling expecting it to magically turn into a jam-like thing, not knowing that I would need to puree it after cooking. They were rather flavorless; not even my husband, who will eat almost anything, liked them, let alone my kids who love store-bough fig bars (they wouldn’t even touch them). The dough was rather difficult to make work in the pan as well, it kept cracking and didn’t seem to want to cover the entire surface. I was frustrated to have wasted all my ingredients (figs aren’t cheap) and wanted to review to warn others. I’m trying another recipe today and I am certain it will end up better if for no other reason than the instructions are complete and has more flavor adding ingredients.

mass producing as we speak for thanksgiving 🙂 awesome fig recipe my family loves it

I gave this recipe four stars out of five, because there are a couple ingredients missing from the ingredient list and the dough was really difficult to work with. Having said that, once I got past these couple things the fig bars really turned out great! They are delicious. I had fresh figs at home so I used three cups of that and only added 1/4 cup of water and a cup of sugar for the filling. For the dough I added an egg to the ingredients listed, 1 1/2 tsp of vanilla, and 3 tbsp of milk. Even with these additions the dough was really sticky and difficult to roll out. I think next time I will try adding an extra egg to the dough mixture, and see if it is easier to work with. Overall, really yummy recipe and great for those with fig trees at home and looking for ways to use them. My family loved these and I will definitely be making them again!

I just tried this recipe and I could tell the list of ingredients was missing 1 Egg and 1/2 tsp vanilla. I added the egg and vanilla to the creamed butter and sugar. After chilling the stiff, crumbly dough, instead of using a lightly floured surface, I rolled the dough into a long rope about 1.5″ in diameter between 2 pieces of plastic wrap. I cut the rope into 12″ long pieces and worked with 1 piece at a time rolling it between the plastic wrap to 3″ wide by 1/4″ thickness. I then spread the fig mixture down the middle half of the dough. Using the plastic wrap for control, I folded the front part over the mixture to the center of the filling and repeated this step for the back portion overlapping the front slightly. Pick each piece up with the plastic wrap and position on prepared cookie sheet with the seam side down. I baked for only 20 minutes and cut into serving size pieces before the bars cooled. These were delicious, a little crispier than packaged fig bars but definitely much better tasting. If you use 3 cups of dried figs, you’ll have enough filling for at least 2 more batches of bars. I used 2 lbs of dried figs (1 lb is about 2 cups), put a lot of filling in mine and have leftovers for several more batches which is great because I’m making them again. This recipe is a keeper. I did make one other change, I used half white and half brown sugar in the fig mixture.