Chocolate Chess Pie with Pecans

I found this recipe while searching AllRecipes.com for a good pie recipe.  Since finding this recipe, I’ve made it three times. 

Ingredients:

• 1 (9 inch) pie shell
• 1 1/2 cups white sugar
• 3 1/2 tablespoons cocoa
• 1/2 cup butter, melted
• 1 (5 ounce) can evaporated milk
• 2 eggs, beaten
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 3/4 cup chopped pecans

Directions:

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Mix together sugar, cocoa, and melted butter.
3. Stir in evaporated milk, beaten eggs, vanilla, and chopped pecans.
4. Pour mixture into unbaked pie shell.
5. Bake for 10 minutes.
6. Reduce heat to 325 degrees and bake for 30 minutes.

Outcome:

The first time I made this, it was a complete disaster.  The nuts had formed a perfect shell across the top, but the filling was runny:

At first, I couldn’t figure out what I’d done wrong.  Two days later, it dawned on me…when I was supposed to change the temperature from 400 to 325, I accidentally turned the oven off.  Turns out, pies don’t cook very well when you just leave them sitting in a slowly cooling oven for a half hour.

The second (and third) attempts were much better:

I left the pie in the oven past the 30 minutes stated in the recipe (about 10 minutes extra in my case), so don’t be afraid to do the same.  It’s a little hard to tell when the pie is firm enough since the nuts form a hard shell pretty early on.  I was erring on the side of caution and I waited until the filling had actually risen up a little and caused separation in the nutty shell.  This might have been overkill, but I had no complaints about the final result.  

This pie was good when it was still warm, but it was even better after it’d had a chance to cool completely in the fridge.  It’s fairly rich, but not sickenly sweet.  With such a quick prep time and delicious result, I won’t be waiting for a special occasion to make this pie again.