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Are You A Pie Person Or A Cake Person? You Can’t Be Both

Are You A Pie Person Or A Cake Person? You Can’t Be Both

By Daniel Neman, St. Louis Post-Dispatch (TNS)

I always thought Simon got a raw deal.

Here he was, minding his own business, on his way to a fair. He encounters a man selling pies–tempting, delicious pies. Naturally, he asks for a sample. Who wouldn’t?

But the pie man, whose name has apparently been lost to history, was having none of it. He wanted to charge Simon for a sample, unlike so many of today’s grocery stores that offer samples for free. Simon did not have a penny to spare–fairs aren’t cheap–so the pie man sent him on his way, hungry and forlorn.

And for this, Simon has universally come to be known as Simple. Obviously, Mother Goose was a cake person.

There are two kinds of people in this world, pie people and cake people. You’re either one or the other. Never have I heard anyone say, “I like cakes and pies equally,” and I’ll bet neither have you.

Personally, I’m in Simple Simon’s camp. It’s pies all the way. Just think of it: A buttery crust baked to a golden brown and filled with toasted pecans suspended in a sweet amber nectar. Or sweet cherries balanced by just the right amount of tartness. Or smooth and silken chocolate topped with a decadent dollop of whipped cream.

On the other hand, you have cake. It’s just cake. Pedestrian, ordinary, sponge-like, bland cake.

And cakes often come out of a box. Even the ones that don’t come out of a box sometimes taste like they came out of a box. Sometimes they taste like the box.
Yes, the frosting is good. I’m all in favor of frosting. If only you could put it on something that wasn’t cake.

Pies are always festive and special; they are a party unto themselves. But you can buy a cake in a sheet.

Newsrooms are particularly fond of sheet cakes; in some respects, newsrooms are a sheet cake’s natural habitat. This particular newsroom has ordered so many sheet cakes from Federhofer’s Bakery that some people here use “federhofer” as a verb, as in “We’ll be federhofering Joe in the front of the newsroom at 4 p.m.”

Any occasion at all becomes an occasion for a sheet cake. You’re having a birthday? Have some sheet cake. You’re retiring early so that other employees won’t be laid off? That’s remarkably selfless and generous of you. Thank you so much. Have some sheet cake.

Sheet cakes just don’t seem terribly celebratory anymore. Maybe it’s the repetition, but I think it is more that they are just cakes. Meanwhile, Federhofer’s also makes sheet pies, in case anyone was wondering.
Even in their smaller versions, pies win out every time. Mini tarts? Great. Cupcakes? Overpriced trendy treats.

The greatest non-pie expression of pies is chicken pot pie, so creamy, delicious and flaky that, when made right, it can actually have more calories than a real pie.

In contrast, the greatest non-cake expression of cakes is a pancake. Admittedly, pancakes are wonderful. Even pie people love pancakes. Call it a wash.

Oh, wait. Pizza also comes in a pie. Advantage, pie.

I’m sure some cake people are perfectly nice. A little bland, perhaps, but nice. They are probably well-intentioned. Their hearts are likely in the right place.

But pie people are where it’s at. We’re exciting, dynamic, vibrant. We don’t need to call cake people “Simple” just to feel better about ourselves.

Photo by Jirka Matousek via Flickr

We Could Have Predicted Cake Wars II

We Could Have Predicted Cake Wars II

We should have seen this one coming.

This is America, after all, a country having no shortage of people with, apparently, too much time on their hands. So someone should have predicted Cake Wars II.

No, that’s not a new summer blockbuster from Marvel. Rather, “Cake Wars” is Slate’s name for the latest wrinkle in the battle over same-sex marriage.

You may want a second cup of coffee for this.

It seems a Colorado man recently filed a civil rights complaint against a baker who refused to bake a cake for him. Specifically, Bill Jack, co-founder of a Christian youth camp, former staffer at a creationist ministry, walked into Azucar Bakery in Denver last March and requested a cake shaped like a Bible. He wanted it to depict two men holding hands, with a big ‘X’ through them. He also wanted an anti-gay message on the cake. Appalled, owner Marjorie Silva refused and Jack filed his complaint, claiming he was discriminated against because of his religious convictions.

It takes little imagination to suspect that Jack walked into Azucar seeking not to buy a cake, but to make a point. Remember, last March the news was full of angry responses to what might be called Cake Wars I (or Jim Crow 2.0), a slew of state laws allowing businesses to refuse, on religious grounds, to serve gay people. This was aimed at exempting caterers, florists, bakers and other wedding-associated businesses from having to work for same-sex couples. Last May, a Colorado judge ruled against a bakery that had refused a cake to two men.

So this is payback. This is, “How do you like it, being forced to participate in something you hate?”

And it leaves us wrestling with the tricky question of how to draw a line protecting the rights of same-sex couples to be served while allowing businesses to refuse to participate in bigotry like Jack’s. Some, including Slate, have suggested requiring a baker to serve anyone who walks through the door, but exempting her from having to write any message — whether “Congratulations on Your Same-Sex Marriage” or “Burn in H–l, Sodomites” — that offends her.

The problem is, that gives a baker veto power over her customer’s freedom of expression. The sentiment on the cake, remember, comes not from the cake maker — she’s just the one writing it out in frosting — but from the customer. Will we then exempt a baker who declines to write a message celebrating a mosque’s 20th anniversary?

So here’s another idea. Maybe Silva should just hold her nose and bake the cake.

You know what happens afterward, of course, this being, again, a nation full of people with too much time on their hands. There follows a spate of folk demanding cakes that insult undocumented immigrants, black people, Muslims. As retaliation, some poor old lady who runs a bakery in some Bible Belt town is asked for a cake promoting Satanism — or Democrats.

It will be tiresome, dispiriting and disheartening. And then, faster than a kiss-in at a Chick-fil-A, it will be over. Because flashpoints in the culture war have a tendency to burn hot, but not long. Because even people with too much time on their hands have to go to work eventually. And because none of it affects the arc of change.

Probably even Jack understands that. His was only a dead-ender’s stunt, protected by the First Amendment, interesting for what it’s worth, but not particularly important in the large scheme. Marriage equality has begun to feel inevitable, gay men and lesbians finding acceptance in the mainstream of American life to a degree unthinkable even 10 years ago.

No mere stunt can forestall that. Therefore, no mere stunt should overly excite us. What should we do, then, about the Bill Jacks of the world? Simple:

Let them eat cake.

Leonard Pitts is a columnist for The Miami Herald, 1 Herald Plaza, Miami, Fla., 33132. Readers may contact him via email at lpitts@miamiherald.com.

Photo: Emilian Tiberiu Toba