Is Pie The New Cake?

Some people think that this year, 2011, is finally the year that the peaceful reign of cupcakes, the Clinton Administration of dessert trends, will end and a new era of Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld pie-terror is upon us. Blasphemy!

Like chlamydia, pie is popping up at weddings, in trendy bakeries, and at society events all over the place, another sign that America has gone crazy. Pie is just fine as a partner for the weak coffee of church basements, for Thanksgiving, for dessert at a roadside cafe in Harmony, Minneosta, but for high falutin’ snacking, you cannot beat the elegant convenience of the cupcake. Abandoning the neat, self-contained cupcake in favor of a clumsy, non-portable slice of pie perhaps signifies that America has moved beyond needing their dessert foods to be easily transportable and has reached the “fuck it; I’m sitting down and eating this piece of pie” stage. Whatever is happening, it’s disturbing and it must be stopped.

To be fair, the same article that waxes poetic about the rise of the pie claims that vegetables are the new meat and that childhood obesity is the new tobacco (and if that’s true, if there’s ever another revival of Grease, all of the rebellious, carefree youngsters will be obese teenagers rather than smokers. That initial shot of Danny Zucko? He won’t have a cigarette casually dangling from his lip; he’ll just be fat), so I’m not sure it wasn’t written while in a state of intoxication or duress, but regardless of whether pie is the new cake or down is the new up, it seems that the times, they are a-changin’, and Team Cake may just have to learn how to deal.