Cake or pie? It’s a question that is often brought up, most likely by your local radio DJ who has run out of things to talk about, however in this essay we’re going to break down the two dishes because it’s a lot more complicated than you think. If you’re looking for a TL;DR and just want to support me by giving me a page view, pie is better because it’s more diverse but cake is the superior dessert. Cake vs pie is an apples to oranges question because you can’t really compare the two.
Let’s start with pie. Pie is the clearer option to choose because there is a wide variety. If it’s got a crust and a filling, it’s a pie. You could have pies for breakfast, lunch, dinner and dessert for the rest of your life. A quiche is a pie, a tart is a pie, a galette is a pie. Hell, a cheesecake is technically a pie because it has a crust and a filling. I haven’t even touched on the obvious savoury pies like meat pies and chicken pot pies but you get the gist. If some higher being gave you the ultimatum to either have cake or pie for the rest of your life, you would choose pie in order to survive but you’d be missing something. The sense of celebration.
Cake is not an everyday food like pie. Cake is used to mark the celebrations in your life. You have birthday cake, wedding cake, graduation cake, gender reveal cake, paternity test negative cake, the celebrations for cake are endless because you can write whatever you want on the top of it! You can’t do that with pie. It would be very difficult to write and read what’s written on top of a pie, plus the pastry couldn’t support candles. Today’s my birthday and if you got me a birthday pie, I’d be very disappointed. I’d still enjoy it but I’d be curious about what possessed you to get me a birthday pie. Cake is also very complex. I’ve had a lot of terrible cakes in my lifetime yet I can’t remember a single bad pie I’ve ever ate. A pie can fall apart on your plate and still be delicious. If your cake falls apart on your plate, it’s not moist enough. I could have said “too dry” but I wanted the word moist to appear in this essay at least 3 times.
Let’s sum this up real quick. Pie is your everyday working class people. Cake is your artists, entertainers and pro athletes. You need both to have a fully functioning society.
Moist.
Johnny Novak 