Homemade Fig Bars are easy, healthy and better than anything you can buy in the store. They’re going to blow your mind.
What pre-packaged treat do you most remember your parents buying you as a child? Graham crackers? Chocolate chip cookies? Gingersnaps? Oreos? In my day, it was Fig Newtons. I think my mother assumed the fig center made them a more sensible choice than the other options at the grocery. While my mom usually baked her own delicious cookies, but I don’t think she ever considered trying her hand at homemade Newtons. Even when I started thinking about making a healthier, less sugar-filled, homemade version of Newtons I was a bit intimidated at the prospect of doing it. It just didn’t seem like a recipe that would be easy to pull off in a home kitchen.
Well, I was wrong. Totally wrong. In fact, in the same amount of time it would take me to make a simple batch of chocolate chip cookies, I made these decadently rich bars, boasting sweet figs tucked inside a tender, flaky whole wheat cookie. Both of my kids agreed they were superior to the store bought Fig Newtons they had recently tried at a friend’s house, and they couldn’t keep their mitts out of the tin I put them in.
One night after two of my little cookie monsters absconded with three cookies apiece and were coming back for more, I hid the tin. I did such a good job hiding it out of sight in fact, that five days later I realized I totally forgot about them. Figuring they would be stale I opened the container and pulled one out to try. Amazingly these homemade fig bars were still as moist and irresistible as the first day I had baked them.
Store bought fig bars for us? Never again!
Homemade Fig Bars
Ingredients
- 1 cup roughly chopped dried figs, stems removed
- 1 tablespoon honey
- 6 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 large egg
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 1 1/2 cups white whole wheat flour
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees.
- Place the figs in a small bowl, cover with hot water, and soak for 10 minutes.
- Remove the figs from the water with a slotted spoon and place in the bowl of a food processor. Add the honey and 1 tablespoon of the soaking liquid. Puree until smooth and spreadable.
- In the bowl of a standing mixer, or with a hand mixer, cream together the butter and sugar for 2 minutes, or until smooth. Add the egg and vanilla and mix until incorporated.
- Add the flour and mix until a dough forms.
- Roll dough between two pieces of parchment paper into two 12 x 4 inch rectangles.
- Spread the fig mixture on one half of each rectangle - spreading up the 12-inch side and leaving a 1/4-1/2 inch border.
- Fold the dough over on top of itself and gently press the dough together at the edges.
- Cut each log into 10 cookies and transfer to a silpat or parchment-lined baking sheet.
- Bake 15-20 minutes, or until golden.
I was blown away at how good these are! The only changeI made was to use raisins instead of figs because I had lots of raisins in the pantry but no figs. Due to the sweetness of raisins I did not add any honey.
The recipe was super simple and came together quickly.
I will be making these again and again and again.
Thanks Nancy! Glad you enjoyed these and were able to customize them to fit what you had on hand 🙂
My husband brought home store bought Fig Newtons. I took a look at the ingredients (first ingredient was sugar and that was the least alarming thing on the list!) and threw them out. These are delicious and much easier than I thought they’d be. I added a teaspoon or so of orange zest to the filling and a pinch of cardamom to the dough. I baked my leftover dough without any filling and even those are delicious! Can’t wait to make again, though next time I will leave out the honey as the figs are sweet enough on their own.
Looks delicious! Thanks for sharing!
These Fig Bars are easy to make and very delicious.
Just made the fig bars, still in oven, question, my dough looked good but when I tried to fold half over I had a mess, the dough stuck to the parchment paper, should I have added more flour, I followed your recipe using same ingredients, maybe I rolled the dough too thin, I know they will taste great because the dough and filling taste good without baking!
Mine was very sticky too, did you figure out a solution? I did use Einkorn flour.
I just did this with dried apricots which turned out wonderful.
Other recipes call for AP as well as the whole wheat flour. Do you recommend this or is it ok just to use whole wheat flour?
My husband would love these.
I hope you love them!
Thank you for this recipe! I bought a jar of fig jam for another recipe and thought I was going to toss the rest!. I will definitely incorporate this into one of my go to snack recipes!
Ok, so why did my cookies crack open along the top?