I’m sure by now you’ve gathered that I have a very sweet tooth. It’s sickly sweet but I don’t feed it as often as my mum does.

I made this cake with slightly ripe figs that was on sale in Pick n Pay. I had initially wanted to make figs and yogurt for desert this Sunday but then realized I had no yogurt.

That missing ingredient sparked a variation to my Chocolate Orange Bundt Cake.

I added figs and lemon to the batter, some milk and lemon juice and the flavors knocked me back. I was so excited to cut into the sponge and when I did the delicate, subtle taste of the figs, the pieces of crunch from the seeds and the very chocolaty texture made me feel warm. This cake is moorish and filling. It’s the perfect tea time treat and knowing that it’s sugar-free I am settled that I can comfortably get away with a slice of this Bundt on days when I run for a long time.

Ingredients

6 Figs - slice 3 and quarter 3

2 cups Eureka Mills Brown Bread Flour (I haven’t tried this with another flour)

1/2 tsp salt

1/4 tsp baking soda

3/4 tsp baking powder

1 cup Xylitol

1 tbsp honey

200 g unsalted butter

2 tsp instant decaf coffee in 1 cup boiling water

1/2 cups cocoa

2 tsp vanilla essence

2 large eggs

1/2 cup milk mixed with 1tbsp fresh lemon juice

zest of three lemons

Method

1. Preheat oven to 180 degrees. Spray a bundt pan well with Spray-And Cook. The cake will fall out of the pan easily with this method.

2. Mix milk and lemon juice together and let it stand.

3. In a saucepan, melt butter, coffee and cocoa and keep stirring. When it starts to bubble take it off the stove and let it cool.

4. In a large bowl, mix all the dry ingredients - flour, sugar, baking soda, baking powder and salt with a whisk.

5. In another bowl, whisk together honey, vanilla, eggs and your milk mixture. You will notice the milk would have curdled.

6. Make a well in the dry ingredients and pour the warm cocoa mixture in there. Fold the ingredients together gently.

7. Add the 2 quartered figs and lemon zest but keep some aside for decorating the cake later.

8. Add the whisked vanilla, eggs and milk mixture to the batter and fold until there is no more flour.

9. Take a slice of fig and layer it at the bottom of your pan before pouring batter into your pan.

10. Bake for 50 minutes.

11. Let the cake cool. If you can touch the pan with your hand for 5 seconds without burning it, you can tip the pan and remove your cake.

12. For the icing, mix 1 tsp of lemon juice with 1/4 cup icing sugar (you can use Xylitol icing sugar if you want a sugar-free glaze) and stir. Drizzle it over the cake and decorate it with leftover slices of fig and lemon zest.