Hungry kid approved fig cookies

Do your kiddos come home from school like they haven't eaten in a week? Ok, you can put your hands down now. I hear ya, I'm right there too. I *try* to always have something somewhat healthy in immediate sight before the locus strip the pantry bare guys come home. So this week I decided to make some cookies. I had picked up a beautiful basket of figs from Trader Joe's earlier in the week that I needed to use soon. Usually I make a fig tart out of them, but I had cookies on the brain. I also have this thing (ok, my family might call it an addiction, but they aren't writing this) about hiding healthy things in everyday foods. No, honey there isn't anything strange about this pasta...

I remembered that an old friend of mine would make fig cookies every year at Christmas, but I never did get her recipe. I remembered that they were some sort of Middle Eastern delicacy and it was an old family recipe. Her cookies were so good that usually my husband and I would eat the ENTIRE TIN in one day. And that was before we had to hide them from roving bands of locust. Over the years we have both moved and our families have lost touch, so I turned to my trusty friend Google. I couldn't really find what I was looking for, but I did find a few recipes for Italian fig cookies. After reading a few different versions of what sounded like old Italian family recipes that were all just slightly different I figured I could surely come up with something. And I did. It's not quite the delicacy of my memories and it's not a true Italian fig cookie, but boy are they good! So good that the dog came in to sniff, beg and search for crumbs (which we never have on our floors, lol).

If you look closely at the uncooked cookies in the picture you can see the fig chunks. My guys really loved the cookies, and I never told them "exactly" what was in them. They didn't ask, they know better now. Feel free to share these little gems with your band of roving locust.