This cake is something extraordinary and incredibly delicious! We baked a huge celebration cake for Christmas and used three batches of the recipe in different size pans to build the tower cake. We used 2 x 23 cm, 2 x 17 cm and 1 x 15 cm pans.
400g dried figs
400ml boiling water
4 bags of rooibos tea
170 g softened butter
210 g caster sugar
4 eggs
300 g flour
7 ml (1½ t) baking soda
20 ml (2 tbsp) fresh rosemary, finely chopped
20 ml (2 tbsp) fennel seeds, finely chopped
Instructions
Cream Cheese Icing
1 Mix 2 x 230 g containers cream cheese and 240g sifted icing sugar with 10 ml (2 tsp) vanilla essence.
Preheat oven to 160 ° C. 1 Spray two 23 cm round cake pans with nonstick spray. 2 Make the rooibos tea and soak the figs until soft. Remove the tea bags once the figs are soft and blend in a food processor. 3 Cream the butter and sugar with an electric mixer until soft and light in color. 4 Add the eggs one by one while whisking. 5 Sift the flour and baking soda together. Mix the rosemary and fennel seeds into the fig mixture. 6 Fold the flour gradually into the butter mixture, followed by the fig mixture. 7 Divide the mixture into the prepared pans. Bake for 40 minutes or until a skewer comes out clean. Remove from the oven. Leave for 20 minutes in the tins before turning out on a wire rack. 8 Decorate the cake with cream cheese icing and sprigs of fresh rosemary.