Submitted by nicole on Tue, 08/25/2026 - 09:28

Fig bread is a delicious quick bread (like a banana bread) made with fresh figs. It's moist, delicious, packed with fresh seasonal fruit, and so easy to make!

If you're lucky enough to have a fig tree during fig season, or a friend with a fig tree (I have both!), you probably end up with a LOT of figs over the space of a couple weeks in the summer. I enjoy as many as I can fresh off the tree, and always have more. Lots more. And there's only so much fig jam I can get through. This year I was inspired to create a fig bread recipe based on my grandmother's banana bread recipe. Both fruits are similarly sweet, similarly soft and with similar amounts of liquid, so I thought it should work well. And boy was I right! Fig bread is an instant hit in our family.

This recipe uses fresh figs rather than dried figs, but if all you have are dried fruits, try switching out the dates for figs in this date nut bread recipe.

Fig Bread Recipe Ingredients:

1/2 cup butter (one stick, or 113 grams) or vegetable shortening
1 cup sugar
2 eggs
about 1 1/2 cups of mashed fresh figs
2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 teaspoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
3/4 cup chopped walnuts (optional)

Cut any woody stems off of your ripe figs and cut in quarters. Press to pack the chopped figs in to your measuring cup to measure the right volume for the recipe. Ripe figs are incredibly soft, so this is easy to do with a spatula or spoon. I used about 12 figs for this recipe, but different varieties of figs come in all sorts of different sizes, so it's much easier to go by the volume of the mashed fruit. The type of figs doesn't matter for this recipe--whatever delicious jammy figs you have available will be perfect.

Cream the butter and sugar together in a large mixing bowl until light and fluffy (I use my KitchenAid mixer). Add the eggs, one at a time, and beat well after each addition. Add the dry ingredients and figs and beat to combine into a fig cake batter like the picture above. The mixer will further break down and incorporate your figs, so no need to mash them completely before adding to the mixture. If you're going to add in chopped walnuts, add them at the end and mix gently. The nuts are completely optional, but I do like the little crunch from the walnuts in the soft, sweet fig cake. For me, the crunchy walnuts are a welcome addition. If you don't like that flavor or texture, feel free to leave them out.

As an optional step, slick a couple more figs into thin circles of fruit to place on top of the cake. It's completely optional, but I think it looks pretty, and I like the caramelized fig on top of the finished loaf.

Divide the batter between two loaf pans. I use nonstick loaf pans, and have no trouble removing the fig bread after it has completely cooled, but if your pans aren't non-stick, I'd recommend cutting a rectangle of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pan. Just remember to remove the paper when you take the loaves out! You can also make a prepared pan by coating the interior of the pan with butter and flour (the classic old-fashioned method).

Nestle the round slices of fig on top of the batter.

Bake at 325 degrees Fahrenheit for one hour. Use a bamboo skewer inserted into the center of the loaf to check that it's done; if the skewer comes out clean, it's ready to pull out of the oven.

Let the fig bread cool to room temperature before removing from the bread loaf pan. The exterior will be a deep golden brown color, and the inside will be a lighter brown, with a moist, tender crumb and an amazingly rich, but not too sweet flavor.

Printable Fresh Fig Bread Recipe

Want a one page, printable, PDF version of this fig quick bread recipe? Click on the image below to print the one page recipe or download it directly to your device.