I like pie better than cake. Every year I have a birthday pie rather than cake. Some years I have been lucky enough to have my friend Tom bake it for me; he makes the best pie on Earth (PM me with your address and I will send you his three pages of instructions). Agent Dale Cooper loves pie, with a damn good cup of coffee. The eGullet thread devoted to the pie vs. cake issue is a fave. Then there's Weebl.

Cherry pie, peach pie, lemon custard meringue, chess pie, pecan pie...open top, double crust, sugared lattice topped (sigh)...all of them contribute to the betterment of mankind. Cake, not so much. And that's not even getting into the savory side...steak & kidney, chicken pot pie, quiche, etc.

I'd love to hear how Rockweilers stand on this important issue, and whether anyone has any good recipe to share.

No brainer. Pie IS better than cake. My stepmother made a kickass blueberry pie this past weekend.

Cake is for sissies.

Mincemeat pie.

Ooooooooh. Damn. Now, that's all I'll be thinking about for the next 4 or 5 months.

Hell yes.

Cakes are lovely. But pies are exalted! Fruit pies, custard pies, meat pies...

The fact that you need a thread to discuss that pie might be better than cake only illustrates the innate superiority of cake as the standard by which all pies are measured, and inevitably come up short. Mmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Cake.

Did the main character in American Pie use a cake? Did Don Mclean sing "bye bye miss american cake"? Did Marie Antoinette say "let 'em eat pie"?

I rest my case.

You are wrong.

Felix Unger

Indeed. It's much harder to make a cake out of meat, and there are very few things that meat does not make better. Ergo, pie > cake.

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Oh boy. Here we go again....

You know, I spend alot of time in our Nation's Capital and I was beginning to believe that all of the press about the insular, backwards misfits living inside of the Beltway was just press driven glop. Now this silly subject comes up on a board that is, otherwise, seemingly filled with intelligent, opinionated people.

Don't waste your bandwidth, just shut your pie holes because:

A good cake is better than a good pie. Everytime.

Sheesh, whaddabunchayahoos.

I am well aware of your opinions on this matter, and your input will be taken into consideration. Perhaps a congressional hearing is in order?

Cake is analogous to the boob grope over a wool sweater. A truly great cake, at best, is like that same grope under the sweater but still over the bra. A great pie, on the other hand, is akin to that moment about ten minutes later when buttons and belts are no longer useful, and the real heavy breathing begins.

There, I said it as tactfully as I could.

Well, it just so happens that A and I own a house, from which I am battling this titanic wrong, that is within sight of a congressman's house who has some room for test cakes in his icebox. Perhaps I will speak to him about hearings. I'm sure that his price has dropped. I saw him cutting his own grass this weekend. He looks like he has some time on his hands.

I like really nice, hand knitted wool sweaters. Tactile entertainment at it's finest. It's a marathon, not a sprint, with us cake eaters.

I hear he likes icebox cake. <rimshot>

I prefer tarts to cake or pie. Though some might argue is gussied-up pie. But I prefer the crust-style of tarts, plus cooked fruit - ICK. With a tart you can skip over the ten minutes and get straight to the chase, with some red heels thrown-in.

mmmmmmmm..... Warm apple pie with sharp cheddar cheese. Vanilla ice-cream goes-with also.

Just my point. Thanks.

With pie, there seems to be a constant need for additives that will serve to improve an otherwise dull and uninteresting dessert.

With cake, you just need a delicious piece of cake. You're all set!

Exactly. Cake stands alone as the pinnacle of pastry perfection.

I foresee a caramel cake in my future. Better go find that bag of While Lily.

Why do I have to choose one or the other? I like 'em both, if they are really good. But that goes without saying. Bad pie and bad cake are equally bad. I wonder if Rose Levy Barenbaum has a preference. She has written a bible for each.

Because if you don't choose, you don't get to argue. And arguing is almost as much fun as eating cake.

Bad pie is much. much worse than bad cake. There is almost always something decent in even the worst cake. Bad pie just sucks out loud...

That said, I personally bake pies, not cakes.

Pie, hands down. When I was a kid growing up in Kentucky, my aunt made rhubarb pie with fresh rhubarb picked on her farm. No wimpy strawberries to dilute the sour goodness of the real thing. (I've never understood strawberry/rhubarb pie. It's like putting coke in a great single malt.)

But now my favorite is cherry pie, followed closely by apple and peach....except for the pecan pie baked by Kudzu Bakery in Georgetown, SC. That is the greatest pie I've ever tasted.

Question: Does cobbler qualify as pie?

IIRC, she admits in the intro to "The Pie and Pastry Bible" that although she is famous for and loves cakes, her heart really lies with pie.

As for me, I love making cakes. I'm better at making cakes than pies. I love decorating cakes, even though I suck at it. But if I'm really honest with myself, I think I actually like eating pie more.

That's right. Pies don't need no stinkin' decoratin'.

I don't know, bad syrupy (or even cough syrupy!), old fruit or gross-crust vs. bad gooky-I'm-going-to-gag-on-this-frosting or really dried-out-several-days-old-tasting cake (which I've had on both pie & cake fronts before) is kinda equal in my book...

This applies to me too. All of it!

From Todd K.'s chat today in response to a chatter requesting where to find lemon meringue pie (which I adore):

"Evidently, a lot of pastry chefs seem to have concluded that you're not going to win a lot of awards and attract a lot of press by making such pedestrian things as cake and pie. "



Really? Is it all about attention? What about good old comfort classics?

Here's an interesting addition to the cake vs. pie discussion--"wacky" cake:

http://www.latimes.com/features/food/fooda...0,3215140.story

[quote name='bookluvingbabe' date='Jul 7 2008, 07:00 PM' post='114539']
Bad pie is much. much worse than bad cake. There is almost always something decent in even the worst cake. Bad pie just sucks out loud...

I dunno. pies always have crust at least, and even bad crust is ok. However, some cakes don't even have decent frosting--I've had some supermarket type cakes at office b-day parties where the usual sweetened shortening icing had a gross oily off-taste to it. ick.

as far as preferences go, i have to separate the fruit pies and the non fruit pies, as a good french silk pie trumps almost any cake, in my opinion.
that being said, now i really want a good french silk or black bottom pie. does anyone know where i can get one?

That's it. I'm done. Unless they provide equal time to cake, I am finished with the Food Section in the WAPO.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/conte...8071502643.html

Hee hee! I almost posted that this morning, but didn't want to rub it in.

Don't forget tho' that Rose Levy Beranbaum is also the author of The Cake Bible...Maybe you should write-in to Chef on Call and ask for equal time!

She is also currently writing another book, which I think will be a cake book.