Bad Baking - Not ALL My Fault

I know I'm kitchen challenged.  I don't know what half of the terms in a cook book mean.  I don't have the patience to measure things out properly.  I try to substitute things that don't work (or omit stuff that is unknowingly important). But, anyway, I try....

So last night, I was flipping through a cookbook to make something that I had all the ingredients for.  Pavlova!  OK!  I'll give it a try!  I beat and beat the egg whites and added the sugar and all looked good.... maybe I am getting the hang of cooking!

I followed all the directions and shoved them in the oven.  After about 10 minutes into the hour and a half baking time, I smell burning.  I open up the oven and the bottoms of the ones on the left are just burnt.  The others are looking fairly dark as well.  Crap.

My oven.  Grrr. 

I turn down the oven and after a few more minutes, more smells of burning.  They're even worse.  I turn the oven down to MIN.  Great.  Now I'm "warming" the burn pavlovas.  Seriously, this is not even 30 minutes into the bake time.

Still smell of burning, I open the oven door a bit and alternate between turning off the oven and turning it on MIN.  I scrapped off the really burnt two and ate the semi soft tops while waiting.  Needless to say, by the time they were "done" all were, well, the bottoms on all were burnt beyond all recognition.  I tried to scrape and salvage, but, uh, no....

Now, I've burnt cookies and brownies in this oven before, thinking this is just me and my inept kitchen skills.... but I have in years past made (at least packaged) brownies before that turned out fine.  And I swear heating stuff takes way less time than the recipe calls.  You'd think I'd be a faster learner..... But today I've come to the realization that my oven is not right.

So, I did a little test... I tried a package brownie mix and turned the oven to MIN to bake.  Sure enough, it still made the edges of the brownies pretty dry, even cooking it at MIN for 15 minutes less!  I actually turned off the oven and let the middle finish cooking.

I have a fantastic kitchen, but my oven blows chunks.  I shall now console myself with some crunchy brownies and a glass of milk, and blame all my kitchen failures on the oven!!!