How NOT to bake a pecan pie

Any time you see a needle nose pliers as part of a story about baking pies, you just have to know it can't be good.

To be clear, Jeff is totally innocent in this fiasco, except for daring me to tell the story on my blog.

So let me begin by saying, I don't even like pecan pie. But Jeff and my Dad do, so every year I make one for Thanksgiving dinner. And every year I learn a little more about how to perfect the pie that I don't eat. For instance, I learned early on to let the syrup mixture cool before mixing it in with the eggs, otherwise, the eggs scramble. This year, I tried wrapping tinfoil strips around the rim of the crust to keep it from burning.

Using pecans that were hand-picked by Jeff's Dad in Texas, this pie had potential to be the best one ever. Until I tried putting it in the oven while not wearing oven mitts. As I slid the pie in, my finger touched the shelf. Not long enough to burn myself, just long enough for me to over react and fling my hand away, bumping the pie, which was still pushed only half way into the oven.

As if in slow motion, the pie started to tip. I tried to save it, but could grab only a strip of the stupid tinfoil. Thick, gooey, sticky maple syrup poured out onto the oven door, and through the hinged opening at the bottom. It then cascaded down my cupboard doors, before pooling onto the floor, which of course I had just finished washing about 30 minutes earlier. The eggs - you know, the ones I didn't mix in until after the syrup mixture had cooled - scrambled on the hot oven door. Of course the pecans also were part of this delightfully messy mixture, working their way into the hinged opening, which is where Jeff was trying to pluck them from in the above photo.

I salvaged the pie crust, but other than that had to start over. Luckily, Bill had sent us lots of pecans. Unfortunately, I'd used the last of the maple syrup in the first failed attempt. So the second version uses regular Aunt Jemima.

And no, it's not a coincidence that I waited until after the pie had been consumed to mention this "little spill".