Eff you, cinnamon pie.

The other day, I was watching Psych on Hulu.  The episode parodied Twin Peaks, which I am too young to understand and which I totally didn't catch on to until the last 30 seconds.  I did, however, catch on to them eating cinnamon pie every two minutes for the entire episode.  I needed to have it.  I blame the coming tragedy on James Roday.

Damn your chiseled jaw.

I found this recipe before I even finished watching the show.  It looked deceptively easy, and I already had all the ingredients.  What could possibly go wrong?

Everything.  That's what.

Here's the recipe, if you can't follow hyperlinks.  I followed it pretty precisely.

Ingredients

• 1 cup white sugar
• 1 1/2 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1 pinch salt
• 1 egg, beaten
• 2 tablespoons butter, melted
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 1 1/2 cups milk
• 1 (10 inch) unbaked pie crust

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F (205 degrees C).
2. In a large bowl, combine the sugar, flour, cinnamon and salt. Add the beaten egg, butter, and vanilla. Mix well and add the milk.
3. Pour mixture into an unbaked 10 inch pie crust (glass pie plate is best).
4. Bake at 400 degrees for 15 minutes, then reduce heat to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C) and bake for an additional 45 minutes. Let cool and serve. Refrigerate any leftovers.

Everything started out smashingly.  I even mixed the stuff in order instead of just dumping it all in the bowl.  It actually looked quite pretty.

Like a mountain of cinnamon snow in gumdrop valley!

The review of the pie said that the filling was very watery before it cooked, so even after adding the milk, I wasn't worried.

I'm so naive.

Here's where I should have gotten worried.  The pie crust had been in the freezer for awhile, and a little chunk of the crust had broken up.  I figured it would be fine.  I am young and inexperienced and dumb.

I put the crust on a baking sheet and poured in the filling.  Miraculously, it didn't spill.  I put it in the oven for the 15 minutes at 400º.  About five minutes later, I wanted my camera to take a picture of the snow, and happened to check the pie.  I found this.

Uncensored thought:  FUCK.

If you didn't read the recipe closely, that's basically a huge watery puddle of sugar.  When sugar gets hot, it burns and carmelizes and gets stuck to the pan until you die.  That's my roommate's baking sheet.  I got another sheet out, put parchment paper on it, and transferred the pie.  I probably sloshed out about a third of the filling onto the baking sheets and the stovetop, but I got that pie back in the oven.

After an hour of congratulating myself, I was rewarded with this--

It was bubbling.  Like a tar pit in The Land Before Time.

I knew I had to let it cool completely, so I (sort of) did homework, then went to see Harry Potter (again.) When I got home, I fed the pie to my guinea pigs *cough* friends.

Alright.  That actually looks pretty delicious.

The pie received positive reviews.  One friend said it tasted like a cinnamon Pop Tart, which, incidentally, would have been much easier to make.  But if you would like a nice, custard-type pie and you like cinnamon as much as I do, this pie is very good.

Just don't say I didn't warn you.