Cake is Style – Pie is Substance

Making a cake means spending time with a spatula. Time better spent making another pie. Cakes are elaborate, more concerned with looks than taste. Cakes have to be stacked, and sliced horizontally, and filled, and sealed, and corrected, and glossed, and creamed, and decorated, and preserved. Go ahead, take a big bite … your cake will look like a warzone. Pie is baked. Period. Take a piece of good old apple pie and the rest just looks better for it.

After all… Cake is French, Pie is American. Rather than wasting days stroking their rolling pins over elaborate designs that – at best – will lead to a quick “oooh” followed by their ultimate destruction at the hands of diners, American cooks eschewed the fancy French focus on style over substance and concentrated on taste. And pie is that much better for it.

Cakes need to be rested, frozen or refrigerated, built in layers. Pie comes out of the oven and is ready to eat. Slap some whipped cream on it, no need to spackle it, and you’re done.

The Cake is a Lie

As every modern man and woman, in tune with the world, knows – the Cake is a Lie. Just take German Chocolate Cake. It’s NOT EFFING GERMAN! Ok? Stop asking me for a recipe. It’s a bunch of weird ingredients mixed and sold by a dude named Mr. German in 1943. COCONUT? That alone should tip anyone off. Nothing to do with Germany. See? Lie! Cake lies. There’s no Black Forest in a Black Forest Cherry Cake. And it wasn’t invented anywhere near the Black Forest. No, ladies and gentlemen, it was (notice a trend, here?) invented by a guy named Schwazwaelder. Hundreds of miles from any forest you have ever heard of.

Then there’s Apple Pie – s’got apples innit. Cherry Pie? Gots itself some cherry goodness. Or it wouldn’t be called Cherry Pie, no? Truth in pievertizing. And no weird inventor dude ever felt compelled to immortalize his or her name in a pie. Mr. Cherry and Mr. Apple didn’t decide to stick some coconut in a shell and call it Apple Pie, just to brainscrew with you. Only cake people do that.

Portal end credits, “The Cake is a lie” (MP3).

Yes, Yes, you CAN have another slice of Pie!

Pie is good for you. Essential oils, minerals, green things, dietary fiber, proteins, and fats are in pie. Have another heaping helpful helping of apples, c’mon. Cake is bad for you. Sugar, saturated fats, that stuff. It’s all in the decoration.

Pie can be your friend in many ways

Say it out loud: “Meatcake”. Reminds you of an industrial accident involving rotoblades, no? Or a mediocre 70s b-list porn movie star. Now with me: “Meatpie”. And, yes, I’ll give you a recipe for that one. Pie comes in sweet and in savory. You don’t have to sell your preciously immortal soul to the dark gods of Baking & Pastry, you can remain, quite securely so, a cook and still make pie. Shepherd’s Pie, Chicken Pot Pie, Steak Pie. You name it.

• A roll (usually 400g) of flaky or puff pastry
• For every 400g of pastry, get 300g of steak. Cool it down nicely, then cut into very fine strips, I prefer them to be about 3 inch by 1 inch by 1/6th of an inch.
• Your usual seasoning suspects. Try it with some Worcestershire sauce for a change.
• Same amount as steak in grated cheddar
• One medium sized onion, cut fine dice, per 300g of steak

If your pastry is round, good for you. Else just use what you have, in shape. Quickly brown steak in pan, just the outsides. Remove. Saute onions until almost translucent. Remove. Add steak, onions, and grated cheddar onto one side of the pastry. Eggwash the sides, fold over heap, seal with your fork, toss in oven at 375 for 20 mins.

And, finally, the piece de resistance. The one thing to rule them all. The incontrovertible proof, that Pie > Cake:

Pie can be fried.

Try that with a cake for giggles. Yeah, you go ahead. Clean my deep fryer, too, when you’re done. Pie, on the other hand… just make some turnovers and instead of baking them, fry them. Voila, instant godliness.