Falling for Figs

It’s where I first met beautiful Mariah, who would be in my 4th grade class, and her gracious mom, Sundae.  We were at Chester’s fig talk at the OPS museum.  As the island’s new dingbatter, I was excited to be part of this community event.

I was with my daughter, Annelise, who was thrilled to be listening to a talk about a local fruit.  As a pastry chef in a restaurant outside of NYC that specializes in farm to table, Annelise is all about food sustainability and using local ingredients.  I had never experienced the pleasure of eating a fresh fig.  I gobbled up Fig Newtons when I was pregnant with Annelise (weird, but true).  I certainly love dates.  But fresh figs, I wasn’t so sure.  During the porch talk, we were able to taste them.  And I fell in love.

I’m ready for fig season now. I have two huge fig trees in the backyard of our house.  I’ve been checking them each day for ripeness.  I like them best with my homemade yogurt.  This year, my plan is to also make some preserves.  But I keep hearing people talk about the island fig cake tradition, which has encouraged me to do some fig investigation.

Stopping by Ocracoke native Chester Lynn’s store, Annabelle’s Florist and Antiques, I set out on my quest to discover everything I could about fig cake.  To my chagrin, when I asked about the dessert, Chester quickly replied, “I don’t make fig cake.”  So I soon forgot the cake and went straight for the figs.

According to Chester colonists brought figs to Ocracoke and Portsmouth in the 1700s.  He has identified 14 different varieties of figs on the island.  However, he says there are five varieties that date back to the 1700s:  the pound fig, the sugar fig, the white fig, the brown turkey fig, and a greenish one from Portsmouth.  Chester recalls a time when you could “smell figs cooking in people’s yards,” as preserving figs has been an Ocracoke tradition.  Chester let me taste some of his own fig preserves.  “I preserved them differently than most people do,” he stated, “I put cinnamon in them.”  With the one bite I took of Chester’s preserves, I think I heard angels sing.  I won the fig lottery.  It was so delicious.  Chester pointed out that islanders used to do lots of things with figs, “My grandmother candied them.  We’d roll the figs in whatever she had:  powdered sugar, chocolate, coconut.  They were chewy.  And over on Portsmouth they put cloves in their preserves.”  Chester propagates his plants at his shop, selling around 300 per year.  He just sent two of his pound fig plants to the White House and is waiting to hear back.

Chester believes that the fig cake tradition started in the late 1950s or early 1960s when Margaret Garrish was fixing a date cake and didn’t have dates, so she substituted her fig preserves.  “And the rest is history,” Chester noted.  He also said that you can find her name listed first among those who included their fig cakes in a church cookbook.  The women whose names appeared after Margaret’s were her neighbors, suggesting that she had shared this baking secret with her friends.

That made me wonder if the famous Ocracoke fig cake bakers today would share some of their baking secrets with us, even though it is Fig Cake Bake-Off time.  So I went to the baker who has swept the traditional category at the Fig Festival two years in a row.

I spoke with Della Gaskill who is the two-time winner of the Ocracoke Fig Festival baking competition in the traditional category.  Della grew up on Ocracoke and owns the store Woccocon Gifts on Lighthouse Road.  You can read all about her story in a book she just wrote entitled A Blessed Life: Growing up on Ocracoke Island.  About the book Della stated, “When I was a little girl, I went to my mother and I said, ‘Momma, one of these days I’m gonna write a book’.  I never dreamed I’d ever write a book…that I’d really ever do such a thing. It’s all about the island and what happened.”  Della’s book tells the story of growing up on Ocracoke, of fishing with her father and grandfather, of the impact of World War II on the island, of experiencing real island life with family, friends, and neighbors…everyone she loved.  And the book also talks about figs.

I asked Della what her secret is to a good fig cake. “I don’t have any secrets,” she told me. Clearly, she doesn’t, as she includes her recipe along with her fig memories in a chapter called, “Figs, Figs, and more Figs”.  Della went on to say, “I’ve been making (fig cakes) all my life.  My mom was an excellent cook and I guess I inherited that from her… and my grandma.  My people…the older folks… were good cooks. My mother used to make chocolate pies and lemon pies. My mother and grandmother never left a recipe.”

Della is famous in her own right.  She makes and sells her preserves and jams at her store and all over the United States.  “I made up my own recipe for my fig jam and my fig rum jam.  And people’s crazy about my pumpkin butter.  I sell it all over the United State,” Della told me.  Della sells her cakes as well.  You can sometimes catch them in her store, but often she ships them off the island.  While Della is uncertain as to whether or not she will enter this year’s Fig Cake Bake-Off, she assured me that she will continue to bake, “I love to cook, and bake especially.”  I personally think her secret in every fig cake is love and I hope she enters this year’s competition.

Not ready to end my quest for all that is fig cake, I was lucky enough to speak with 81-year old Gaynelle Tillett.  Gaynelle has been supplying fig cakes to the Ocracoke Seafood Company for the last five years.  She was also born and raised on Ocracoke and told me, “I have the same recipe as everyone else uses…from the yellow Ocracoke cookbook, but I might put in a few extra spices.”  Gaynelle was also eager to share her fig cake secret weapon, “I put a buttermilk glaze on mine.”  Pattie at the Ocracoke Seafood Company (the "Fish House") told me today that she had just ordered more cakes.  With Gaynelle as the baker, I can certainly see why.

Sweet Tooth/Fig Tree Deli owner Darlene Styron features a fabulous cake at her store that you can purchase by the slice.  Her mother, Linda Garrish, makes fig cakes all week long for the popular sweet spot.  Patrons rave about the delicate texture of the cake.  When I was in there, one customer was so eager to buy Darlene’s fig cake.  He told me he came back to her store every year just for that slice of cake. Fig cake at the Sweet Tooth is a very popular treat!

After all of my fig discoveries, I know that I’m excited to taste the fig entries at this year’s bake-off set for Friday, August 12th.  Bystanders get to taste the entries at 5pm (you’ll see me there!).  Figs in any form are a part of the Ocracoke’s heritage.  They bridge the past and the present, sending a rich message that tradition matters.