I hate our oven

I promised to make a pecan pie for dessert yesterday (Mom sent home 4 cups of fresh pecans with Tess last week), and nearly forgot until well after noon. My MIL usually has Sunday dinner at 4:30p, depending on how my FIL feels (he is going through chemo right now...last week was not a treatment week, so he was feeling okay). I had to haul to get this pie done, and of COURSE the way I chose to make it take FOREVER.

First, I made a 10-inch single crust for a 9-inch pie dish, because I always seem to run out of pie crust before I get to the edges. This worked out well, because I had a deep pie dish.

However, I forgot the fickleness of my oven. It seems that when you set it to anything over 350 (and I had to bake this for 5 minutes at 375), it gets hotter than it should, yet when you set it below 350, it cools off too much. Thus when I set it down to 325, it went down to 300, and 45 minutes was not enough. The pie filling was still wobbly and I had to bake it another TWENTY FIVE minutes. I did it in increments, holding my breath for the crust as I was afraid it would be blackened before the filling firmed up -- glass pie dish and all.

Still, it turned out good after sitting for a while, so all was well. The center was still a bit liquidy at dessert time, but hey, Pecan Pie! It tasted great. Which is amazing, because I am missing the baking gene. Cooking, yes, love it, baking...I need help. Cakes collapse and cookies burn; however, I seem to manage pies quite well. Mom always requests that I make the pumpkin and mince meat pies at Thanksgiving.