Too good to be true Almond Pie Recipe

You’ll often find people who have a household recipe: the one that always turns out – and tastes! – amazingly, and which they’ll hardly share with anyone.

This almond pie recipe has been in our cookbook for a few decades, never failing to please everyone who manages to grab a bite; and trust us, this one flies off the plate!

ingredients (around 12 slices)

• Dough:
  • 250 g Maria cookies (or digestive cookies, or graham crackers)
  • 125 g melted butter
  • milk (as needed)

• Topping:
  • 200 g unshelled almonds (as seen in the recipe photo)
  • 6 tbsp milk
  • 200 g sugar
  • 125 g butter
  • 4 egg yolks
  • vanilla ice cream or whipped cream (optional)

method: preparing the almonds

1. Preheat the oven to 180°C / (350ºF).
2. If using unshelled almonds, boil them in water for 1 minute.
3. Drain the almonds and rinse them with cold water to cool; you should now be able to easily peel them.
4. Once the peeled almonds are dry, you can lightly blitz them (aiming for a coarse mixture, not as fine as flour). Reserve the almonds.

method: dough

1. Place the whole cookies into a food processor, and process them until finely ground into fine crumbs.
2. Pour cookie crumbs into a medium bowl, and add in the melted butter. Mix it well.
3. If the mixture feels dry, add a few tablespoons of milk, and keep mixing. Do this in batches until you’re able to keep the whole dough together.
4. Pour the mixture into a round cake pan (25 x 6 centimeters) previously greased with butter. Reserve.

method: topping

1. In a pan, mix milk with sugar and butter, and warm it up until the butter dissolves completely.
2. Add the blitzed almonds, and let the mixture boil.
3. Remove the pan from the heat, adding in the egg yolks, one at a time, mixing the batter well and quickly (so it doesn’t get lumpy).
4. Put the pan back on medium heat, continuing to mix until you get a smooth and creamy consistency.
5. Pour the almond filling into the unbaked dough, spreading it out evenly.
6. Place the pie in the (preheated) oven and bake for 15-20 minutes, or until the filling is set and the crust is golden brown.
7. Once baked, remove the pie from the oven and let it cool completely before slicing and serving.
8. (Optional) Serve the pie with vanilla ice cream, or a dollop of whipped cream.

tips / good to know

• Almonds
  • you can substitute unshelled almonds for 150 g grated almonds
• Dough
  • this dough works great with other pie toppings – and we’d love to hear about your experiments!