It was a difficult choice: the apple pie or the New York-style cheesecake?

Both sat in front of me, looking succulent on separate plates, on the counter at Liberty Pies & Cakes in Madrid. I pushed my coffee aside to study this opportunity.

We were in the middle of filming a report about Burton Novack, an American expat in Madrid whom you might call an unusual entrepreneur.

In the midst of Spain's economic crisis, he opened a shop two years ago to make and sell American-style pies and cakes.

Unusual because he's an octogenarian. He looks pretty fit. He says he still plays tennis. He certainly still drives because I took a ride in his car from the shop to his office, where I met his large parrot.

"I said, 'why don't I go after that making apple pies and cherry pies and things like that. Of course I really didn't know anything about how to do it,'" Novack said.

Read - American apple pie warms struggling Spain