Today’s Weekend Assignment is a bit whimsical:
Weekend Assignment #331: Cake V. Pie (A Scalzi Flashback)
Which is better — cake or pie? Explain your reasoning. Will you choose the moist sponginess and frosting-topped goodness of cake? Or will you side with those flaky crust-adoring, fruit-filling fanatics of the pie nation? You must choose one — and only one! No trying to suggest that Boston Creme Pie is really kind of like a cake, or how cheesecake is actually not unlike a pie. Take a stand! Be true to your pastry orientation!
Extra Credit: Having chosen cake or pie, now admit your favorite variety of the dessert you did not choose. So if you chose cake, tell us your favorite pie. Prefer pie? Tell us your favorite cake.
Well, I must say that I love the pies made by my Dear Wife – strawberry pie, apple pie, and so on – but if I’m forced to choose between Pie and Cake… I’m forced to choose cake.
(Thinking outside the box, though, I go with brownies and cookies. So there 😛 You can’t beat the warm, fresh-baked gooeyness of brownies and cookies.)
But for cake – I like the fluffy texture, and I love the frosting. But don’t slather that fake, store-bought whip-cream stuff. I like the smooth, creamy kind – especially cream cheese frosting!
The problem with pie, meanwhile, is that the edge of crust that sticks up above the rest of the pie is usually dry, overcooked, and completely lacks any flavor. And yet, every pie has this unappealing, unappetizing rim of whatever. I often don’t eat it.
But as for the “Extra Credit”…
Let’s see… my favorite pie. I like Apple Pie, sure. Cheese Cake is wonderful in all its varieties. But my favorite pie is anything with a creamy, chocolatey filling. Because I love anything with a creamy, chocolatey filling.
The Undiscovered Author 
cake all the way. Frosting can sometimes even be eaten by its lonesome.
As for pie … eh.
If only you knew the power of the Cake.
I eat frosting “by its lonesome.” It’s full of sugar but delicious. Why else was sugar invented?
Hi Stephen 🙂
Yes, I am a cake person as well. Black Forest cake is my very favorite, but I LOVE baking all different kinds of cake, and cookies, and pies, and eclairs. Yep, I have a wicked sweet tooth that goes all the way to my soul. 🙂
Thank you so much for playing this week!
-Carly
Indeed, your reply is a veritable cornucopia of deliciousness. I do love all such things as cookies and eclairs and anything else you can make with chocolate!
Cake is my favorite word in the world to say. The sound of it makes that mouth watering ‘k’ sound against the top of your mouth. Another vote for cake here! I’m particularly fond of cheese cake (which could be more of a pie since it has a crust?). I’m not a huge icing person, one of those people who will scrape it off the cake, but I do like cream cheese icing.
If I had to choose a pie, I’d pick fresh blueberry pie. MMM… berries make everything taste so good.
I have to agree that cheesecake – though called a cake – is in fact a pie, because it is a filling inside a crusty shell. Apparently boston cream pie has the opposite affectation: called a pie, but in reality a cake. I’ve never had the latter.
I’m a frosting eater. I eat (almost) all the cake out, and save the frosting for last. I even have some people who are non frosting eaters who give me theirs, so I have almost double. (I’ll take your frosting, Tessa!)
Boston Cream Pie is very good, Stephen!!!
I’ll have to try it some day. I prefer to make sure each bite of cake has at least some frosting. I don’t usually need extra, but I need to stretch out what I have across the whole piece of cake…
I think it is important to note that the President sides with me on this issue. For future reference of all involved in these ongoing battles.
Since this was binary choice, I also went with cake – but like you, I’d really rather have brownies than either cake OR pie. Cheesecake’s good, too. A cheesecake brownie is the best (and horribly decadent, which is WHY it’s the best).
On second thought, there’s really no wrong answer to this question.
You’re absolutely right. Too many lives have been lost in this senseless war. The hostilities must end. Pie and Cake can live together in harmony! Delicious harmony.
I have never eaten pie [apart from that McDonald’s abomination; blame my country on that one], so I go with cake. Oh yeah, mouth watering, spongy goodness that sticks your jaws together. Mhm-mhm.
Yes, that thing you may have eaten at McDonalds is not pie. It is more like the mutant half-breed child of pie and gross. You know, from an American perspective, the worst part about the proliferation of McDonald’s abroad is that people in other countries may actually believe that McDonald’s represents authentic American cuisine or culture. It does not, not really. It only represents a “lowest common denominator”…
I have seen food shows from the US. McDonald’s is far from representing the American cuisine of delish decadence. I wish I could taste the real deal, but oh well food related dreams will have to satisfy until I manage to visit the states.
😀
The cool thing about American Cuisine is it’s a lot like American Culture: it’s really a fusion or amalgam of all the various cultures that interact here. Relatively few dishes that I can think of are unique to our country. In fact, even quintessentially “American” dishes like the Hamburger are really just evolutions of dishes brought here by immigrants from other countries or modifications based on more local ingredients. That said, I’m pretty proud of our cuisine. 🙂
Right there with you on the creamy, chocolatey filling 🙂 add some coffee to the equation and that is the taste of heaven for me!
Go team cake! 🙂
Mmmmm…. Chooooocolllaaate.
Ooh, chocolate and coffee? I could die. 🙂 🙂
Actually, I, personally, don’t drink coffee. I know, I know. I’m a writer. And I don’t drink coffee? How do I live? It’s a personal thing. I make up for it in chocolate. 🙂
YOU DON’T DRINK COFFEE?????!!!!!!
I used to be the same way. But I’m learning to like it. That’s probably a good thing that you don’t drink it. 🙂
Yeah, I’m a total teetotaler, and somehow I’ve managed to bundle coffee and tea in there as well. For me it’s water, juice/fruity-flavored beverages, milk, hot cocoa, and the occassional root beer, Sprite/Siera Mist/whatever, or orange soda. I don’t know how I’m able to write… but somehow I manage.
I think where writers leave a coffee void in their life, chocolate fills the spot nicely. But if you’re a writer and you don’t eat chocolate, or drink coffee, don’t even talk to me.
Lucky for me, I absorb chocolate.
I almost don’t drink coffee. Until a couple of years ago, I’d only had one cup of coffee. Now, I only drink coffee in Sweden.
Cake, def. You are on target about pie’s evil crust. And then you have to sit there and politely suffer, while the person who made it talks on and on about how they thought this crust was better than any crust they ever made. While you think it is worse than anything you’ve ever tasted…even worse than the crust you left behind from your peanut butter and jelly twenty years ago. At least that crust was soft, not like this, not like this pie crust which is like eating tree bark…no, burnt tree bark.
But now, I’m rambling. 🙂
Seriously, why do pies even have that crust? Nobody eats it, and it tastes dry and gross.
The same reason you go to an Italian wedding and they give you those sugar-covered almonds. Or the same reason that they write those introductions/prologues/forewords at the beginning of books. Or the same reason that they play “It’s a small world after all” at that ride in Disney World (Or Land).
Tradition. You can’t mess with tradition.
Hmm… I guess it’s true a well-done crust looks nice. Just don’t expect me to put it in my mouth. Also: I love a well-written prologue. And I love writing them 😛
I settle for a page-and-a-half “BEFORE WE BEGIN” historical preface for my fantasy world. But most of the time, I skip the: “John Bunyan spent 16 years in prison, while writing his work, Pilgrim’s Progress…”
I treat prologues in a different way. (I was heavily influenced by how it was done in Robert Jordan’s The Eye of the World.) I have snippets of story that touch on the main plot of the story but which don’t occur in the main sequence of the plot – so mostly events that happened in the past or which are happening concurrently but in another location and which won’t affect the main plot until later. Stuff like that. In purpose they also reveal some background information, but in recent years I’ve shied away from the “history of the world” style prologue.
I think I’m actually a pie vote. In the minority here. I like the crust when it jells with the fruit juices (not so keen on the edge crust). Favorite pie would be rhubarb. EC: Cakes, probably carrot.
Rhubarb? Interesting. I can honestly say I’ve never had Rhubarb pie.
Not that surprising, it’s fairly uncommon. But I had it growing up in MI. However, in Sweden, rhubarb is one of the more popular desserts.
Someday I’ll have to try it…