Spanish fig cake, or pan de higo, is not a cake by American standards since it contains no flour, eggs, or leaveners. A fig cake is little more than a mass of compressed dried fruit. It’s traditionally made with Spanish jewels like pajarero figs and marcona almonds. Tragically, I can’t find room in my budget for pajereros and marconas when my cupboard is already ripe with Turkish figs and plain old California almonds. So I dare to stray from authenticity. Truth be told, before looking up what goes into these little fruit cakes, I’d never even heard of pajerero figs. I’ve gotten this far knowing only of black missions and calymirnas. Clearly, I’ve led a sad and sheltered life. What little I could find out about pajereros suggested that they were sweeter and more delicate than the figs of my youth. So in an attempt to fortify my potentially dull figs, I did what any natural sugar lover would do, and called in the medjool dates – or as we call them in our family, “man jewels”.

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