The Pie Ho

Every so often I stumble upon something cool and pie related on the interwebs. In my mind it’s like a little victory for pie, a point for the little guy in the world of “Ace of Cakes” and “Cake Boss” and the obnoxious sister duo that makes cupcakes on TLC (“the learning channel” lols). Don’t misunderstand me, I love cake, I love watching “Ace of Cakes” (not really a fan of the other two), I even took a step into the cake world myself once.

BUT, while my aesthetic senses (and occasionally my tummy) love cake and the things people do with cake, my heart will always belong to pie. If my heart were a food, it would be a little heart-shaped pie, the kind with the sugary glazed filling and a lattice crust, served on a doily. That being said I love it when I find people mentioning pie or doing cool things with pie. It’s like pie is the humble, simple, rustic, kind of sexy farm hand who wears plaid and has a beard who takes up his axe to rebel against the oligarchical tyrant Lord Cake who mercilessly taxes the people on his land and looks like he stepped out of 18th century Europe. Subsequently, I’m a little worried that pie is going to become a hipster. I know that’s RIDICULOUS, but you have to admit pie COULD be a metaphor for simplicity and independence and going against social norms that dictate that you eat cake on your birthday, so I’m totally terrified that people who use metaphors to be douchebags will take pie and turn it into the new food mascot of their skinny jeans/knit hat/creative facial hair movement. I want everyone to eat pie, especially pie I bake, I just don’t want it pie to belong to anyone in particular. Not me, not you, not the hipsters. Pie is for e’erybody!

My mental image of cake (Hugh Laurie on “Blackadder”)

My mental image of pie (Joe Manganiello on “True Blood”) Yes I realize how dysfunctional this is.

ANYWAY, every so often I find bits of pie pop-culture which I find entertaining. (Note: this post is a transfer from my blogspot address, all fun pie pop-culture posts are usually reblogged over at therealpieho.tumblr.com, which is for that specific purpose. Also for funny Sherlock posts.)

The first thing I found was a completely awesome, completely true rant about how awesome pie is (Bias? What bias?) on the blog “Hyperbole and a Half” by Allie Brosh. If you took ALL the hilarity and ALL the awesome and ALL the velociraptors and compressed them into a brick of fantasticness, it would be this blog. When I saw this and saw that Mademoiselle Brosh is a pie fan, it was like the brick of fantasticness was blown up by the Mythbusters and Fantastic Dust (tm) rained down from the heavens, spreading joy to all…okay maybe I’m exaggerating a little. But it was totally a silent victory for Pie (with his axe and his plaid) and I did silently rejoice in the knowledge that the pie cause had such an awesome proponent. But yeah, you should check out her post called“Cake Versus Pie: a Scientific Approach” because it is a very well rounded argument with totally legitimate points and graphs and stuff. Also drawings, which are always good.

This drawing of super pie is totally by Allie Brosh, I may have to make it a reality at some point…

The other link I wanted to post is to a video called “Charles Phoenix’s Cherpumple: the ‘Monster’ Pie-Cake” on the good ol’ youtube. Have you ever heard of a turducken? If you haven’t I’m totally about to rob you of your innocence; a turducken is when you take a chicken, stuff it inside of a duck, stuff that inside of a turkey, and cook it. It’s foul…oh I’m trying to resist!…Ah, I can’t! It’s fowl! The principle it just so disturbing it makes me wonder what kind of lunatic thought it up. Anyway, the “cherpumple” is Mr. Phoenix’s dessert version. It’s an apple pie baked inside of a spice cake, a pumpkin pie baked inside of a yellow cake, and a cherry pie baked inside of a white cake, all stacked on top of one another and frosted with cream cheese frosting. The thought of it makes me nauseous, it’s gross and it sounds like it would clog your arteries before you could say “obesity” but in a way that totally makes me want to try it. I’d probably die from too much of a good thing, but I’m just curious enough that if someone knocked on my dorm room door and was like “I made a cherpumple, you want some?” (because that kind of thing happens in college) I’d probably risk certain death for a taste.

Charles Phoenix with his culinary Frankenstein