Most people labor under the mistaken impression that World War I started shortly after Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria was shot by an assassin. The truth is much darker – and harder to swallow. It seems a young Bosnian chef presented the Archduke with a fruitcake. Gravely offended by the notoriously dense and challenging food, Ferdinand tried to hand it back. The miffed cook withdrew a pistol from his pantaloons and forced the minor royal to at least have a taste of the fruitcake. Ten minutes later, of course, he was dead, another victim of the dessert of iniquity. Two days later, the war began.
That story may be a complete fabrication, but the near-mystic repulsion inspired by the Christmas fruitcake can make you doubt history, not to mention the hardiness of the human alimentary canal.
Over at My Daddy’s Cheesecake on Clayton Rd. they’re bucking bad reputations with the seasonal “Fruitcake Cheesecake.”
MDC owner Wes Kinsey claims that the Fruitcake Cheesecake “tastes similar to fruitcake, with a lot of spices, cinnamon, candied fruit, and brandy. It tastes like a cinnamon-spice-type dessert.”
The hybrid of sinful cheesecake and evil fruitcake “is selling really well,” adds Kinsey. Whole cakes are $27.95 (for 16 slices) and single slices are $3.25.
If even this rarefied version of fruitcake is too much to risk, Kinsey advises that My Daddy’s Cheesecake “just recently also added a chocolate-mint cheesecake with a crust similar to the Thin Mint Girl Scout cookie.”
