There are many recipes for fig-ricotta bake, and they all pretty much have the same ingredients. The only difference is that some recipes had the cook baking the figs and then spooning ricotta mixture into a slit top, and the others had the cook slicing the figs and baking with the ricotta. I went with #2. Baby spooning in delicate amounts of ricotta mix seemed like too much work.
I had most of the ingredients the recipe called for right on hand, except for honey. I had the ricotta, figs, butter, cinnamon, pecans, but no honey. I decided to substitute maple syrup, which was a mistake.
The maple syrup down south isn't really maple, though it is a syrup. It is mostly sugar or corn starch water with colored flavoring. The syrup turns bitter as it is bakes, whereas honey just turns mellow when it's heated. Although my recipe is a bit bitter, it is still quite good. I will definitely use honey next time.
The only other problem is that the best recipe I found had no cooking oven temperature listed and no times for length of time in the oven. So I combined the most usual amounts from the other recipe I'd read, 350 degree oven for about half an hour. I have no idea if cooking longer would have made a difference or not, but sometimes you just have to improvise.
Here are the results
