Twenty foodie gifts from Cost Plus World Market

J. Wohletz

2) Pistachio custard-filled holiday cake
This cake looks really great in the picture on the box -- light, fluffy, filled with nutty goo. I bought one so that I could take it home and serve it off of my cute new cake holder. After struggling with the box for several minutes, I pulled the plastic-wrapped, amaretto-reeking mass out of the cardboard -- so far, so good -- and noticed that the packet of confectioner's sugar had melded into a plastery hunk. I tossed it, used my own out of the pantry, and cut a slice.

J. Wohletz

It was dry. Like a Saharan f*ck dry. The custard was a suspicious olive green color, and tasted like baby oil smells. I have two words for this cake: Duncan Hines.

J. Wohletz

1) Yule log
I was also intrigued by the packaged, chocolate-covered yule log with chocolate and hazelnut custard filling. Again, the picture on the package made it look appealing -- and practically crammed with custard.

J. Wohletz

What's up with these boxes? It took a bread knife for me to hack through this one to get at the big snack cake-looking thing, and it didn't resemble the picture on the box at all. It had some sort of crumb topping that I think was supposed to look like bark -- it didn't -- with a small, crusty icing flower on it. When I sawed a slice off this log, I was disappointed to see that the custard was not flowing -- or even trickling. The rubbery dabs of what is probably custard were surrounded by an arid, loofah-textured bread that scraped my mouth on the inside.

Don't buy this cake, either. Unless the box says Entenmann's, Hostess or Little Debbie on it, I'm no longer interested.

---

Follow @CafeWestword