Pecan Pie

The Mission: 
To use some of the pecans that husband's friend gave us after Christmas.  I'd heard that The Pioneer Woman makes a fabulous pecan pie, so I went to her website and decided to use this recipe.  I was pretty pleased to see that I had all of the ingredients on hand.... though I chickened out and used a store bought refrigerated pie crust instead of making my own.  (Though I do  plan on trying my hand at pie crust some other time..... eventually..... when I find my courage the time.)

The Ingredients:

• pie crust - unbaked 
• 1 cup sugar
• 3 Tbsp brown sugar 
• 1/2 tsp salt 
• 1 cup corn syrup (I used light) 
• 3/4 tsp vanilla extract 
• 1/3 cup melted butter (salted) 
• 3 eggs 
• 1 heaping cup of broken pecans   

The Instructions:

1. Prepare the pie crust in a 9" pie plate.  
2. Pour the pecans into the unbaked crust.  
3. Mix the remaining ingredients in a medium mixing bowl and pour mixture over the pecans.  
4. Cover the top and crust of pie gently with aluminum foil.  
5. Bake in a 350*F oven for 30 minutes.  
6. Remove foil and bake an additional 20 minutes.  
7. If the pie is too jiggly, re-cover with foil and bake until set.  (My pie took an extra 15 minutes in the oven until I felt it was solid enough.)   

The Results & Reviews: 
 Okay.  Let's start off with things that were good... 
1 - For the most part it tasted fine.... well at least the filling did.  The crust edges were a bit too done for my taste.
2 - It was easy enough to make, though apparently I'm missing something since it wasn't perfect (or even close to perfect).

Now let's talk about what is not so good.
1 - Even though I recovered with aluminum foil in order to bake the jiggly pie an extra 15 minutes, the crust came out too done and the top tasted a tad burnt.  (and the filling somehow managed to stick to the foil and peeled off - you can see in the pictures.)
2 - it was UGLY.  Really ugly.  Again - see pictures.
3 - The crust cracked during baking and syrupy filling got underneath and stuck everywhere.  Not quite sure how that happened.
4 - As the husband pointed out, the gel part of the filling wasn't smooth but instead had turned lumpy and weird.

Overall score:  No one else ate or saw the pie except for the two of us, so I don't have many reviews to go by.  If I do make pecan pie again - which I will soon - I will try a different recipe.  Obviously I missed some key step in this one in order to have it turn out lovely and rave-worthy.  But since we ate it and didn't throw it out, I guess it wasn't all that bad.  I'm just glad I didn't attempt this for company!