the ultimate winner was cheesecake. I don't know about you, but I'm not certain that cheesecake is a pie. But I shall leave it for you to decide...
The good was Jezebel's Cake vs. Pie vote-off this past month. The bad is that
The cheesecake problem
Cheesecake is pie.
9(10.2%)
Cheesecake is cake.
22(25.0%)
Cheesecake is BOTH pie AND cake.
7(8.0%)
Cheesecake is NEITHER pie NOR cake.
50(56.8%)
Comments
Basically, my thinking goes like this: Cheesecake has cake in its name. It is presented like cake: with extra adornments and decorations, fussy, fancy, and often pretentious. But it has a crust, like pie! It is served in one tier, like pie! BUT! Etc. etc.
So much for my prediction about apple, huh?
I would definitely not have thought cheesecake would win the pie category over such fine fruit pies as blueberry or apple, though.
And leaving aside the whole question of meat pies, which are turnovers, which are *sort of* pie...
Pie is primarily savoury anyway. *g* Ask Mrs Miggins.
I haven't felt enthused enough to organize a pie-off here since everyone (except Adam) agrees with me. ("Top crust only? What the hell kind of pie is that?") I need to find some olde worlde diaspora. Otherwise it would just be sitting around and eating a bunch of pie.)
Or a Tart.
I am not convinced by the "but it isn't pastry" or "there's no top crust" arguments. There's no top crust on a pumpkin pie, and even on fruit pies it's optional (it's so not-structurally important that people do crazy decorative things with the top crust on a pie all the time). And crumb crusts are an absolutely acceptable variation on pie crust lining, especially for custard pies: I have never seen a peanut butter pie or a chocolate mousse pie made of pastry, for example.
I think to be a cake you have be a little breadlike, and cheesecakes are not at all so.
http://isitpie.com/