I assume you launch cgminer from the command line today? Can you try to enable the API for it by also adding something like the following command line arguments:
--api-listen --api-allow W:0/0
At this point it should be possible to point an External Miner in Awesome Miner to the IP address of the computer running cgminer.
I do not launch it from the command line - I downloaded it from the link I posted, when I open/run it, it automatically starts prompting me for pool information
This does not appear to run like any cgminer version I have used before.