S. Worthen | Weblog

It's a custard pie, like pumpkin pie. I'm going on preparation method for that vote. You make the shell, you pour the custard in, you bake it.

I am not convinced by the "but it isn't pastry" or "there's no top crust" arguments. There's no top crust on a pumpkin pie, and even on fruit pies it's optional (it's so not-structurally important that people do crazy decorative things with the top crust on a pie all the time). And crumb crusts are an absolutely acceptable variation on pie crust lining, especially for custard pies: I have never seen a peanut butter pie or a chocolate mousse pie made of pastry, for example.

I think to be a cake you have be a little breadlike, and cheesecakes are not at all so.