- Y'all, I'm so happy to be
able to share this recipe
with y'all today.
I made grand girls fresh
apple cake from Georgia.
Oh gosh, a couple of weeks ago.
And while I was talking about that,
I was talking about the fig cake
that I love to make.
So people were writing in,
"Make that fig cake,
"make that fig cake."
So I am so happy to share
the recipe with you.
And in all of my books, I
never had a fig cake recipe,
but my dear brother did,
he had a fig cake.
And he mentions how much he
and I love this fig cake.
So I'm so happy to share
this recipe with y'all.
It's hard for me to
believe, but in August,
my precious Bubba will be gone one year,
on August the 15th.
And I can't hardly believe it.
In some ways it seems like yesterday
because he stays so close
in my mind and my heart, you know,
like standing right next to me
and you know, my brother,
he had some hard knocks
when we had to bury our daddy
when he was 12 years old
and he was 16 when we
had to bury our mother.
And that was a terrible blow
for this precious little boy.
And I just hurt so bad for him.
And I hope he's enjoying the piece
that he's getting right now,
but this is in memory of
my brother, Bubba Hires.
And I loved eaten with
Bubba, because you know,
some people just eat to live
where we kind of live to eat.
I mean, we really enjoyed a meal together
and this is one of our favorite cakes.
So here we go.
Bubba tells us to sift together,
two cups of all purpose flour,
a teaspoon of salt,
a teaspoon of baking soda
and one and a half cups of sugar.
Now he says to sift,
but I'll show you the way I kind of sift.
This works.
Just as well as sifting.
Let's see, I'll just make
sure all those dry ingredients
are all mixed up.
And now we're going to
start with our eggs,
we've got three eggs,
that are going in there.
And we're going to get that going.
This really is the easy
cake to make y'all,
it's kinda like a carrot cake where you,
you almost don't even
have to have a mixer.
Alright, then go slowly start adding,
one cup of butter milk.
There we go.
One cup of buttermilk,
and I don't care what kind
of cake you're making,
your butter milk, just really,
it really makes the cake (incoherent)
You know, it's going to
be a Goddamn good cake.
All right, now I'm going to add,
now Bubba said to use one cup of oil,
but I'm going to use just
a bit more than that,
I'm probably going to use right
at a cup and a half of oil.
Cause seems like the last time I made it,
that's how much I used,
so I'm going to stick with that.
All right, now I'm going
to add my vanilla flavoring
and my butter.
It's a butter flavor extract.
So I'm going to do like a teaspoon of that
and a teaspoon of vanilla.
Oh, my grandmother Hires
used to make up a cake
and I don't know if I've ever
shared the recipe with y'all,
what was it?
It was...
It was a butter...
And the flavor was orange,
oh, I'll have to think on that one,
when I'm not thinking about anything else.
And I'll see if I can
find the recipe somewhere.
I can't remember the name of it.
I know it had the word butter in it.
All right, that looks nice
and well incorporated.
All right now, the recipe calls
for a cup and three quarters
of fig preserves,
And these fig preserves
came off of our tree here.
And I'm the only one here that
really likes fig preserves.
So they last a long time when
I make a couple of batches,
but you know what?
We didn't hardly get it.
We didn't get, how many did we get?
Eight, we got eight, one or two of them.
- [Eddie] The squirrels.
- The squirrels like figs.
- [Eddie] They like a bite.
- They like one bite and
then they throw it away.
And they're doing the same
thing with the pear tree,
I hope we can get some pears.
Do you like fig preserves great gran?
Oh, my phone is mine too.
All right, so I'm going to mix those up
with the mixer and hoping that'll break
those figs down, because
when I make a big figs,
I don't mash them.
I leave them whole cause
and I leave the stem on,
cause I like to be able
to pick it up by the stem
and eat it along with my toast.
Another thing that
Michael and I argue about
is kinda like our shrimp in the eighties,
Michael's tails off,
I'm tails on.
Fig preserves he goes for
stem off, I want it on.
Although he did,
I don't care what he wants
because he really didn't need them enough.
So I do them the way I like 'em.
I need the child is going to be so good.
All right, now I'm going to add
a cup of pecans.
And I'm going to bake
this in a tube pan y'all.
I'm not going to bake it in my burnt pan
because I want this cake
to have plenty of room.
Because while this is baking,
we are going to be making
a buttermilk topping.
And we're going to pour
it all over this hotcake
as soon as it comes out of the oven.
So I want the cake to have
plenty of room to grow
and then hold our topping too.
All right, now I'm going
to spray my pan with,
back in the day,
I used to use a solid shortening
and then dust it with flour.
But today they have come up
with another convenient product
and it has the flour and
the shortening in it.
I don't like breathing it.
I got it good enough.
All right, so I've got our
oven preheating at 325, y'all.
Look at this big chunks of fig.
Yes.
- [Eddie] And this rises
up pretty high, does it?
- It rises up some, yeah,
cause remember we put
the baking soda in it,
so that's going to help it rise.
- There we go.
See one that easy.
We really could have made this cake
without even using a mixer.
But for some reason it just
makes me feel better to,
you know, have that mixer.
So in the oven, 45 minutes,
or until the cake pulls away from the pan.
Now while that's baking,
we can go ahead and make
the buttermilk topping,
that we are going to
pour over that hotcake.
Okay friends, the cake...
It's fixing to go off,
the timer's fixing to go off.
So we're going to put together the topping
that we're going to
pour over it real quick
and that's going to be
one stick of butter.
I want to show y'all something.
This is what I've had to resort to,
to tryna see.
Okay, the Obama that is black.
So it's hard to see in there.
All right, we're gonna add,
I think it was a cup and a
half of sugar, let's see,
three fourths of a cup of sugar,
a half a cup of buttermilk.
What did I yell you,
I knew it was going to go off.
Let's see what it looks like.
It looks beautiful.
Eddie, can you come over
here and get a shot,
look at that y'all.
Look at that beautiful cake.
And we'll take a knife
and I'm just gonna go
around the edge, cause this topping,
and then I'm going to put on it.
I want it to, you know, be
able to get all in there.
All right, we're going
to add one tablespoon,
a white Cairo syrup,
and if I'd have taken the
time to spread that teaspoon,
it would've just rolled
right out of there,
like melted butter.
All right, and then
half a teaspoon of soda.
So we're going to bring this to boil y'all
and then we're going to
just pour it directly
on to our hot cake.
- Bubba's recipe didn't
call for any kind of spice,
but you know, if you like the
taste of like a carrot cake
or something like that with the cinnamon,
you could always add like
cinnamon and cloves to this,
and just give you another twist of flavor.
All right.
So that won't take, but a minute,
I think we have to cook it,
let's see how long did he tell us.
Like three minutes.
So this cake is beautiful.
Ain't it Eddie?
- [Eddie] Yes.
I remember being(mumbles)
- Oh, it's so moist, just
collapses in your mouth.
You know, Bubba was,
he was really, you know, more,
a couple of different hats with Bubba.
And Bubba wore a couple
of different hats with me.
I had to finish, I had to try to start.
I had to try to finish what
mama and daddy had started
because I was seven
years older than Bubba.
So when our mother died, Bubba was 16.
So, you know,
I wore a mother hat and a
sister hat and a friend hat,
but I felt very protective of Bubba.
He was this close to my child,
as it could be without him being my child.
So, I mean, he's
constantly there, you know,
in my head and I miss him so bad.
I'm actually the only one
left from my immediate family,
my mother, my daddy, my brother.
And it just seems so strange to say that
I don't have a brother.
I don't have a brother anymore.
And it just makes me real sad.
And then it makes me very happy,
thinking about all the
good food that we shared
over the years, our mama, my
daddy, when we'd have steak,
y'all mama would buy the sirloin
steak with the bone in it.
And you know,
she could give us four
servings, sometimes five.
And Bubba and I would
fight over that bone,
both bone mowers.
And pull a little thing, in fact,
I've got a picture Eddie
of me sitting there.
I had my bonnet on,
cause my hair was rolled,
and Bubba was sitting there so happy,
he was mowing a bone,
and I was looking at him like,
like a sister would,
but I thought he was disgusting
eating all those bones,
all though lots of times I won the fight
cause I liked the good bone too.
Okay, look at that Eddie,
Wanna put you're finger on that Eddie?
- [Eddie] I'll wait for the cake.
- Well, I'll tell you what,
this is good enough, I
could pull me up a couple
of this stuff you only drank it.
All right, so here we go.
Just go pour that all over that cake.
You know what,
I think I might just do that Eddie.
Poke some holes in it.
Let it go down in there.
Don't you think that'd be good.
- [Eddie] I think we take
that with the Apple cake.
- Oh yeah.
Any cake that I baked that
has like a glaze on it,
I'll poke it.
So it can go down in there.
Now we're gonna,
we can't take the cake
out until it absorbs,
that wonderful buttermilk glaze.
Makes me suck my teeth.
Oh my gracious.
- So I'm going to stand up here
and I'm going to kind of work this in
until it's all gone into the cake
and then I'll flip it over and show y'all
what it looks like and
how easy it comes out.
Johnny, my grandson, his mom didn't know
if it was on what?
- YouTube or Facebook.
- YouTube or Facebook.
All right, so y'all can see
the cake is still, you know,
very hot, but almost all of the juice
has all of that glazed look at that.
- Wow.
- Doesn't that look delicious?
All right this is how we
going to get that cake out.
And this is--
- That's a cool way.
- Ain't that a cool way?
And this is kind of when I
start praying the cake gods.
It's so heavy John.
No, it was so heavy.
No, it was so heavy.
- Oh, it looks so yummy.
- Well doesn't it?
Oh, I wanna cry.
I wanna cry, cry, cry.
This is real life y'all.
Okay.
It's so moist.
- And so yummy.
- And so yummy, but I'm
so sad because (mumbles)
I have never had this happen, ever.
Alright, so I'm going to try to, you know,
it's so hot.
- Wow.
- I really rushed this John
You know, trying to.
- [Eddie] Why does the spin
have the little handles on it?
- I don't know, I guess so I can grip it.
- [Eddie] If you didn't
have, if it was flat--
- I really rushed this y'all
it should have actually
hold a little bit more,
but I was trying to quickly
show y'all what it look like.
I hope yours will look better.
But you know what it
will hit like a champ.
John's won't play Lego's.
I'm so upset.
(mumbles)
Look at this beautiful cake.
- I feel like six, six,
six jumped on my cake too.
So look at how pretty that cake is.
- This looks yummy.
- That was unbelievable how
heavy Eddie, that cake pan was,
and you know, this cake pan,
it's not level.
- [Eddie] If it was
level level, it's like,
it's not even a pound.
- All right here, you wanna taste this?
Yes.
- Huh?
(mumbles)
- And you know what?
I can't even move it because it's so hot.
I can't even move it to get
it in the center of the pan.
That's very appropriate sounds,
John, that you're making.
- If you decide to make this,
I would let it cool a bit longer,
but I was anxious to show y'all.
Loving best dishes y'all.
I wanna cry.
I just had to share with y'all,
a taste test that Eddie is
doing on this beautiful cake.
- It doesn't matter how that looks.
I mean, it tastes absolutely wonderful.
Ain't it Wonderful?
