If you’ve never heard of this dessert that’s priced at $14,500, you soon will. No after-dinner mint, this.

It’s a special treat that’s designed more to when the appetite for buzz. Served up in a resort set in a colonial town of Galle in Sri Lanka.

If you take a closer look, this is more than what the menu describes as “A combination of a gold leaf Italian kasata, flavoured with Irish cream and served with a mango and pomegranate compote and a bubbly-based sabayon…”

All yours for the $14,500 price tag, but please don’t choke on 80-carat aquamarine. It’s balanced on the chocolate sculptured stilt fisherman that happens to be the logo of the resort.

Ah, the resort. That’s the whole point of this. It’s called The Fortress, because this beautiful city by the sea does have the ramparts and remnants from a Portuguese era that goes back to the 14th century.

Pricing as a strategy is not new.

I came across a similar (fun) ad this week in Time magazine for the Sprint Blackberry,s 8830 World Edition smart phone. It is advertised as “The first$10.5 M Cell Phone.”

To be sure, it’s just Blackberry, but it does have a picture of an exotic island on the small screen, and the “island gift”is described as an optional $10,499800.01 when you purchase a $199.99 phone. The small print is really funny. “Island offer only available to the wealthiest 100 people on planet Earth.” It’s really a waste of a double-tuck ad just to get the headline noticed, but people do try…