Fig & Honey Cake

Anecdote


Rati Bose my first best friend ever. We met each other in a back-of-beyond colony of Nagpur where our fathers were posted and our mothers partied. We use to pee together as we shared a common fear of the dark and mean horrible cruel ghosts. A habit we dropped back then, but we continue to groan over our mean horrible cruel husbands and are still afraid of the dark. We were also afraid of our own and each others’ mothers because imparting discipline was carte blanche among the “aunties” in Nagpur, and this trauma is even today a talking point between us.

Rats is a super woman today, she juggles a job with two kids and self cooks twenty dishes for any visitor, a facet that comes from years and years of conditioning, a bug that I escaped, fortunately. She gyms, cycles and over- manages (read micro manages) all crisis situations but she cannot cross a road.

As kids we used to make home-made squash flavoured ice cubes and freeze them in bottle caps held tightly by broom sticks. We would charge for these chilled pieces of God-drops like she would charge her father for plucking his white hair. Quite the business woman, dessert making starting early and is still a flair. Try this quick and healthy recipe; it will become your weekend family ritual.

Stuff that you must have:

1/2 cup sugar
3 eggs
4 tea spoons of vanilla essence
½ cup dry chopped figs
2 teaspoons baking powder
Cold milk
Salt
Lemin juice
Honey
1 cup Flour

What to do:

Beat the sugar with the eggs and the vanilla essence.
Add 1 cup heaped flour which has 2 teaspoons of baking powder. Fold it in with the wet mixture. Add dry chopped figs, a pinch of salt, cold milk till you attain the desired consistency. Add in a squeeze of lemon juice and some honey. Baking time would be 45 minutes and voila!

How to serve:

At tea time with a cuppa or as a dessert with some white ice cream or with some whipped cream.

Trivia:

The fig was a Cleopatra favourite. It is the only fruit to ripen on a tree and is actually a flower inverted into itself. Yet again, the secret behind Cleopatra's beautiful skin was her baths with milk and honey. What do you know, the Egyptian queen would surely have loved this cake.