So I have this fig tree in my back yard, and I just picked about 20 ounces of ripe figs, with many many more to come.
What am I supposed to do with them?
Curse them. (Jesus hates figs)
Put them in a box and send them to me.
I love fresh figs, but it’s very, very rare to get them up here. For some reason, they’re not a very popular fruit.
Dry them and put them up. Or make fig preserves.
I love figs, and my kids like them too. They taste great and they’re good for regulating certain bodily functions, if you catch my drift.
Cliffy looks around, is surprised that he’s the first person to come into the thread to make an I, Claudius joke, and leaves sheepishly.
–Cliffy
Make Newtons of course.
Now that that is out of the way. . .
This is a stupid question, but, how do you know they are ripe? I have a tree in my yard also, and I can never tell when they should be eaten. Do they turn purple when ripe? Mine have never gotten beyond green. Are they supposed to be sweet? The one time I tried one, it tasted more like a cucumber than anything. As a result, I usually just let the wildlife have them. We have at least one blue jay, a pair of cardinals, and squirrels than like them.
Yeah, reddish purple and sweet.
My wife seems to have found some sort of cake recipe… I guess I’ll let her handle it unless someone here can highly recommend a recipe.
Was the newtons thing a joke? Cuz I loves me some fig newtons 
You can pickle them!
(Ask Podkayne what to do with any random sort of produce, and the answer is usually: Pickle it! And give me a jar!)
This recipe was taught to me by the super-cute executive chef at the Brass Elephant. (okay, me and about 100 other people, but I was totally sitting in the front.)
Blend blue cheese and heavy cream together until you get a creamy, stiff batter-like consistancy. (or experiement with your choice of semi-soft cheese.)
Cut figs in half and put a dollop of the cream mixture on each half. Wrap the whole thing in thinly sliced prosciutto.
Eat. Groan with pleasure. Repeat.
Some figs are purplish, black, or reddish when ripe; other varieties are still green-colored when ripe (like Kadotas). Whatever color they are, you know they’re ripe when they’re a bit squishy and the inner seedy pulp has turned pinkish red. The best test, of course, is the taste test - do they taste sweet and faintly like honey? Then they’re ripe.
The best thing to do with fresh figs, IMO, is to devour them instantly before they over-ripen. I’ve never tasted a recipe which involves cooking figs which I like as well as just eating them out of hand. Well, maybe one exception: slice the figs in two to expose their rosy, glistening insides, arrange them artistically on a plate, and then drape them with a few slices of good prosciutto de Parma. Serve this as a starter for an Italian meal. Yum!
Faced with an abundance of figs a few years ago, I made a fig-pineapple conserve to go with ham sammiches or as a ham glaze. It was yummy.
In addition to the half-dozen or so pecan trees we had in Alabama when I was a kid, we also had a couple or three fig trees. The birds and squirrels usually fixed it so we weren’t able to get as many as you say you did, but we’d take them to Grandmama’s house and she’d make ice cream with them. The other options already mentioned, especially preserves, were also popular in that town. I don’t recall anybody making Newtons, though. (There was a family of Newtons in town, but that didn’t matter.) Ours would be purplish, at least reddish, when we picked them. The green ones weren’t ripe yet. They smelled good, too, IIRC.
I like cutting them in half and then broiling them (on tin foil), cut sides up, until they caramelize. They’re delicious that way with something cool and creamy like yogurt or mascarpone, and maybe some toasted almonds or walnuts.
Eating them plain is also wonderful.
I made some popular hors d’oeuvres one time by putting pre-made won ton skins into muffin cups, stuffing with figs and blue cheese, and then baking them until brown and crispy.