Pie and oranges.
When someone invents a key-lime cake, pecan cake or cheesecake cake (cheesecake is pie) that is as good as the pies then I might switch to cake.
Homemade pumpkin pie with fresh homemade whipped topping. No cake can compare. Pie it is.
If only we had some kind of chart to show the percentages of different preferences…
Might be worth starting. In my case, I’d go with 55% Pie to 45% Cake. It’s close!
Am I cooking it (as I cook for the sake of enjoyment) or eating it?
If the former, pie; if the latter, cake.
Non-cup, non-ice cream cake is truly vile.
There is no such thing as bad pie.
I’m going to take it that you haven’t met my sister and tasted her lemon meringue soup.
Pie definitely. Even if you just compare your generic fruit pie against generic cake, pie wins. But on top of that pie has the advantage of the wider range of cheesecakes, quiches, and meat pies.
Way more choice of pies than cakes, sweet or savory, rich and creamy or light and fruity, or heavy and savory.
Favorite pies - pumpkin, apple, mincemeat [with meat not the vegan type] and those are the traditional ones that get made for thanksgiving and christmas.
Blech. Most icing sucks. And pies can have meringue.
I tried coming up with a top 5 for each category, and seeing which won out. I didn’t even bother with cake after looking at my pie list:
- Lemon meringue
- French silk
- Derby pie
- Cherry pie
- Rhubarb pie
That doesn’t even count key lime, cheesecakes, or even apple!
I should have specified ‘if made properly’.
I chose pie because Alton Brown says that cheesecake is pie.
Pie. Cheesecake is pie. Chocolate cream pie is pie. Either one tips the scales away from cake.
Does anyone out there happen to know if the Youngstown OH airport still sells the best coconut cream pie in the world at it’s cafe counter? That was a happy surprise on an otherwise miserable trip.
I’ve never liked pies. Gimme cake!. Yum.
Pie. By a big margin. Rhubarb is my favorite.
too much flour in cakes.
My sentiments exactly. Cake is a convenient surface to hold the frosting.
Cake.
Like Sattua, I like the combo of cake and icing. Pie is good sometimes. If you’re in PA Dutch country, it can even be fantastic. Cheesecake rocks. But I still like cake better. 
My problem with pies are that so many are ruined by bad crust. It is hard to make good crust, which to me, is almost a desert in of itself.
Ice cream cake! Ice cream cake! It’s mah favorite.
A really good, fresh banana cream pie trumps everything.