“Cake is overrated; pie is the superior dessert.”

This is one of the internet's oldest food fights — recent informal polls have put pie ahead by a healthy margin (PBS's 2012 readers survey had pie winning 59% to 41%), though the gap has narrowed over time (a 2015 BuzzFeed poll had it closer to 52–48). Professional bakers, who you'd think would have a definitive answer, are split right down the middle.

Lindsay Hollister Heffner, founder, The Pie Hole LA (Team Pie): "We bake from four generations of family recipes. Most people have memories of their grandmother, or mother, baking pie. Basically, pie has soul!" On cake: "Cake is dry, cake is boring." Asked when cake is ever the right call: "If your family hates you and gives it to you for your birthday." Paul F. Tompkins, comedian (Team Cake, mostly for the bit): "Cake will always be superior to pie... Frosting! Y'all forgot about the frosting!" He dismisses pie filling entirely: "It sounds like filling. It's just there to prop up the crust." Though he later admitted the take isn't meant to be taken too seriously: "It's absurd to say one form is better than another." Richard Reutter, Caroline's Cakes, South Carolina (Team Cake): "100 percent birthday cake, every time, and without hesitation... there is something really fun and special about filling up the top of a cake with candles." Reddit's r/foodquestions crowd (the "it depends" middle): one popular answer split the difference entirely — "I'll have the cake and my husband will have the pie. Between the two of us, we are not going to hurt any feelings" — while others noted the real variable is quality and category (cheesecake and tres leches get a pass either way; "cheap cake" loses to "cheap pie," but a good chocolate cake beats almost anything).