Serves 8

Total time: 1 hour 30 min
Preparation time: 40 min
Bake time: 50 min

Ingredients

For Pie Crust

• 1/2 cup Butter
• 1 cup Flour 
• 1/4 cup Powdered sugar 
• 2 Tbs Whole milk
• 1 Egg

For Egg Wash

• 1 Egg
• 2 Tbsp Whole Milk

For Vanilla Almond Cream

• 1/4 cup Sugar 
• 1/4 cup Almond flour
• 1 Egg
• 1/4 cup Butter (room temperature) 
• 1 tsp Vanilla paste 
• 1 Tbsp Hawaiian Vanilla extract (or rum extract) 

For Vanilla Apple Filling

• 4 Apples
• 1/3 cup sugar
• 2 Tbsp Butter 
• 1 Vanilla Bean (or 1 tsp of Vanilla Paste)

For Caramelized Pecans

• 1/4 cup roasted pecans
• 2 Tbsp sugar
• 2 tsp water

Process

Step 1: pie crust

Make a traditional pie crust. Mix cold butter, flour and powdered sugar in the food processor until it looks crumbly. Then add milk with egg, mix it until it has a homogeneous texture. Leave the dough in the cold for 30 mins.

Step 2: vanilla apple filing

While the dough is stabilizing in the cold, we will prepare the filling. Take 3-4 medium apples, peel them and cut into small cubes. Melt butter in the pot, add cutted apples, sugar and vanilla paste (or 1 vanilla bean). Mix it and cook until the apples are semi-soft and the liquid evaporates. Let it cool.

 Step 3: vanilla almond cream

First mix soft butter with almond flour and sugar. When it is homogeneous, add egg, vanilla paste and vanilla extract (or rum). I prefer to add vanilla extract made with rum from Hawaiian Vanilla Co's Extract Trio Set. This ingredient is really important for it to get creamy, just add it and you can notice how aromatic it will be.

Step 4: assembling a pie

Preheat the oven to 365 degrees F.

Divide the dough into two parts and roll them out. Place one layer of rolled out dough into a pie dish for baking.

Put the vanilla almond cream on the bottom, then vanilla apple filling.

Cover the pie with the second part of rolled out dough. Flute the edges and bake it until the crust becomes golden.

Then make the egg wash, brush a pie with it and bake until the pie is golden brown.  

Step 5: caramelized pecan

Once you try caramelized pecan, you will always make it. My advice: increase the portion, because you will like it so much that you will eat it just like that.

You can cook caramelized pecans any way you want. But I prefer the next one.

Mix sugar with water and heat it until 240 degrees F. Then add roasted pecans and stir quickly, the syrup must cover all the nuts. Go on stirring. The first step of caramelizing is when the water evaporates and pecans look white as seen below.

You have to keep stirring. In 2-3 minutes the sugar will begin to melt and caramelize. That will be the second and last step of the caramelizing process, pecans look brown, covered with dry caramel as in the picture below.

Step 5: enjoy!