Fig and Pistachio Cake for Fall

How did it become fall? It seems like just a few weeks ago I was sailing the blue waters of the Mediterranean. Appearances of plums and peaches everywhere, a lambent harvest moon, and now the year’s gone crepuscular.

I know there are fall-weather fans who can’t wait to break out the scarves and wool coats; as for me, I find charms in all the seasons (or what pass for seasons in the bay area – I’ve heard all the jokes before). What always trips me up, though, is the one-step-forward, two-steps-back weather progression we have here. One day it’s completely foggy; the next perfectly sunny. A weekend of threateningly grey cloud-filled skies gives way to shorts-wearing temperatures. I’m perfectly eager to welcome fall – I just wish it’d make its definitive entrance and stay, instead of tip-tapping in and out like an elusive cat. While other parts of the country get a beautiful, russet-crimson-vermilion fadeout of summer, we get climate confusion.

So how do I solve my meteorological dilemma? By going to Florida next week, where it’s even more steadfastly un-fall.  I will come back tan and utterly unconvinced that it is October. If it weren’t for the fruit I see at market I could be in utter denial.

Okay, so maybe these black Mission figs can autumnize me. I love the really ripe ones, that almost fall apart before you can get them in your mouth, like a purple sugar bomb. To get myself in the mood for fall (while it’s blazing hot outside and I’ve got the fan running), I decided to turn some figs into dessert.

I played a little free association to get to this recipe – sort of like those boxes of word magnets that you would arrange in various dada combinations on the refrigerator? There ought to be a set for desserts. Like “pie”, “peach”, and “sui generis“. Or “chocolate”, “vanilla”, “chiaroscuro”. Like recipe brainstorming on crack.

So I started with figs, dandied about with oranges, flirted with walnuts, succumbed to pistachios, pondered rosewater, toyed with lemon, considered cream, and settled on mascarpone. The final result: pistachio cake with mascarpone cream and honey roasted figs on top. That’s where ingredient-and-word-play get you.

Figs split and ready for roasting in the oven. You don’t have to roast them; they are a perfectly fine accompaniment on their own. But the thought of honey-scented figs just upped the autumn factor for me. They are also really good by themselves, if you don’t have time to make a cake.

Pistachios ready for pulverizing. The cake is essentially a genoise, made nutty with pistachios and moistened with sugar syrup.  I found the mascarpone cream had a weight and tang that contrasted nicely with the light sponge cake, moreso than just a basic whipped cream filling. I also didn’t want to make the cake too sweet, as the figs-and-honey were already providing plenty of sweetness. The end dessert is light but grounded at the same time, perhaps an ideal metaphor with our to-and-fro dance with the beginnings of fall.

I’ll return in a week. Happy fall, everyone!