I never had fresh figs, growing up. They were just never a part of our dining repertoire. Fig Newtons – of course! But I had never eaten a fresh fig.

It wasn’t until I was in my 20s, and happened to receive figs as part of a CSA box, that I tried them for the first time.

CSA means community-supported agriculture, and a CSA box is a box filled with fruits and vegetables that they put together for their subscribers every week or so. A lot of the time, CSA boxes are comprised of whatever the farm happens to have that week – which means you can end up with a lot of produce you might not ordinarily purchase.

Not knowing what to do with figs when they showed up in my CSA box, I turned to the internet – and all the recipes I’d bookmarked from blog posts over the years.

And back then, this fig tart recipe from Sophisticated Gourmet caught my eye.

This time around, I was once again surprised by figs – but this time they came from my brother and sister-in-law’s garden. A whole container of figs showed up at my door, with the instruction to eat them soon so they don’t go bad!

I could eat them raw, but… I’ve got a YouTube channel! And I couldn’t turn down the chance to make something with them!

This recipe is super, super simple.

You start with puff pastry. If you’re fancy and just happen to have homemade puff pastry in the freezer, or want to make some for this, be my guest! But I’m using store-bought. Let it sit out at room temperature for about half an hour, but not much longer – just thaw it enough to unfold it.

Cut the puff pastry into squares – you could do four bigger squares, but I found cutting it into 9 smaller squares resulted in perfectly snack-sized tarts.

Next we’re going to cut the figs. Make sure you wash your figs well – I’ve been told the sap from the trees can cause chemical burns, although I certainly haven’t tested that theory myself. Then remove the stems and quarter them.

Sprinkle your puff pastry squares with a little sugar – if you have vanilla sugar, that would be lovely here.

Then arrange four fig quarters on each square.

Sprinkle the figs with a little brown sugar.

Then bake them at 400F for 15 minutes.

Serve with ice cream or whipped cream, and enjoy!

They’re light, flaky, not too sweet, and such an easy way to take advantage of summer produce! You could easily switch these out for just about any type of fruit – berries, stone fruit, apples, bananas, even jackfruit would be great.

Fig tarts

slightly adapted from Sophisticated Gourmet

Ingredients

• 1 sheet store-bought puff pastry
• 1 tsp granulated sugar
• 9 ripe figs, quartered
• 1 tsp brown sugar

Cooking Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400F. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Roll out the pastry and cut into 9 squares, then place onto the lined cookie sheet.
3. Evenly sprinkle the top of each square with the granulated sugar, and top each square with a quartered fig.
4. Lightly sprinkle brown sugar over the figs.
5. Bake 15 minutes, until the pastry is puffed and golden brown. Let cool.
6. Serve with whipped cream or ice cream, if desired. Enjoy!

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