Decided to rewatch this episode, and I noticed that almost all of the complaints could've easily been fixed. For example: at the start with Spikes list, why not have him say something like: "#3 check to see if Twilight is right when she says my feet smell like garbage. *sniff* *sniff* ugh guess she WAS right..." instead of what they had? I get that he is a young guy, but I found that part more cringe worthy than humorous.
How about instead of Twilight going: "This is the noble dragon code. Surely you know how important the noble dragon code is to a dragon!" have something more like: " The noble dragon code is an idea Spike came up with to keep his greed in check all the while helping out his friends. This means a lot to him, so we can't just get him to forget about it!" That way, we know more about Spike and it sticks to the former notion that all things dragon related are basically unknown to ponies.
How about instead of making Spike awful at cooking and completely botching the pie, do something like he accidentally grabbed a cup of salt rather than sugar due to lost labels? This would explain why he can bake in other episodes while not being able to in this episode and you could still have the Rarity pie gag. (this one actually happened IRL during a cooking class I was in when a girl make salt cookies instead of sugar cookies due to lost container labels)
And finally how about just having Spike do more farm labor tasks? The tasks that he was performing at AJs were tasks that he does everday such as cooking and cleaning. How about ones that he has never done before? Show him trying to buck a tree or may be carry too many apples up a hill (with hilarious results!) instead of just him just being a klutz for absolutely no good reason.
Maybe it's just because I am a Spike fan, but I thought this episode was a bust, despite it's high potential. I shall consider this the Alexandre Daigle of Spike episodes.