I’ve always known myself to be a pieman, and that self-knowledge was reaffirmed by last Saturday’s Cake Contest at Omnivore Books.
There were some good ones. (Click and then click again to enlarge.)
But they were, after all, merely cakes.
It’s the difference between crust and icing.
Between filling and “cake,” gluten-free or not.
A pie is easy to slice, and every slice is the real deal, but a multi-layered cake, not so much.
A pie focuses your attention on its substance, the fruit or the cream…a pie is like an envelope containing a fascinating letter.
A cake is usually somewhat skimpy in the substance department; even when it’s multi-layered, you still get a lot of cake.
I am partial to molten chocolate cakes, which, you might say, are pie-like, but after a couple of bites, as they cool off, you’re still left with a lot of cakeyness.
And I’d also like to make an exception for my father-in-law’s Xmas fruitcake, which is so dense and richly studded with nuts and green and red things, and so delightfully flavored with firewater.
