There is a way to do what you want using position: absolute; but I don’t see where you’ve tried it in your fiddle.
Have you tried searching?
As a search term I tried css position text in center of parent container and was able to find to successfully do what you want.
Here’s something I did a while ago that shows the centered text better. And to be completely honest/transparent, I used that same search term to find out how to center the text
Since you had mentioned using position: absolute; and wanting the text in the middle of a circle I took the liberty of changing your code slightly to show another way to do it.
You can find it in this sample pen.