Meatless Mondays A-Z: Figs

Hello 2SS readers!

We’re back from our weekend in Montreal, kicking off the 2012 cross country season! It was a great weekend full of fun, running, and awesome eats! We’ll be re-capping the weekend’s events tomorrow, but for now….

Meatless Monday!

This week, the letter is “F” for figs! Mmmmm figs . We love them, they are so naturally sweet and delicious, with a little bit of texture added from their teeny-tiny little seeds. Yumm:)

We were really excited when we found out that this week was figs, as probably one of our favourite little grab-and-go snacks are fig newtons! In high school, we used to always have a package of fig newtons in the house, and they are something we’ve been wanting to try our hand at making for quite some time.

MMAZ gave us the perfect opportunity.

When buying them at the grocery store, we always got the 60% whole wheat ones, but we knew that we could do better than that!

Our fig newtons are 100% whole wheat, and contain no added sugar.  They also use coconut oil instead of butter.

They should actually be called date-and-fig newtons, because our filling has dates in it (partly to help with sweetening, but mostly because we only had one package of dried figs!).

Don’t forget to head over to Heather to check the rest of this week’s participants.

Happy Meatless Monday everyone!

Whole Wheat Fig Newtons

Prep: 30 min
Bake: 30 min
Makes: 20 squares

Ingredients:

For the Filling:

1/2 c. dried back figs
1/2 c. dates
1/2 c. water
1/2 tbsp lemon juice

For the Crust:

1 3/4 c. whole wheat flour
1/2 tsp salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 c. coconut oil
1/4 c. creamed honey
1 egg, brought to room temperature
1 tbsp luke-warm milk
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp luke-warm water, if needed

Directions:

For the Filling:

Place figs, dates, and water in a pot and bring to a boil. Turn down to medium-low and cook until the dates and figs soften and begin to “melt”, stirring frequently and slightly crushing up the figs.  Once the water has cooked away, add the lemon juice, remove from heat and allow to cool.  Blend in the food processor to remove the chunks.

For the Crust:

Pre-heat oven to 350 F.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the dry ingredients.  In another bowl, cream the honey and coconut oil.  Add the egg (the egg must be at room temperature, or else it’ll cause the coconut oil to harden) and milk and vanilla.  Combine the wet with the dry and kneed with your hands until you have a smooth ball of dough. Ad extra water if the dough is too dry.

With a rolling pin, roll half of the dough into a square about 1/4 inch thick.  Spread fig filling on top.  Roll out the other piece of dough in the same way and place over top of the fig mixture.

Bake for 30min, until lightly browned.

-twosaucysisters

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