Ask ten people where to find the best chocolate dessert in Christchurch and you get ten answers. A supermarket mud cake. A café slice that has sat in the cabinet since morning. A block of something from the corner dairy. Chocolate is everyone's default, and defaults get done badly. At our boutique patisserie inside The Welder on Welles Street, chocolate is a craft ingredient, not a safe bet.
Here is what is on the menu, and how to get hold of it.
What sets our chocolate cakes apart
Almost every chocolate cake uses the same three notes: cocoa, sugar, cream. The difference between a forgettable one and a memorable one is contrast. Something salty. Something sharp. Something with enough crunch to break up the richness before it coats the roof of your mouth. Dhi trained in Brazil, where chocolate desserts are built around brigadeiro and doce de leite, and that influence runs through most of what leaves our central city studio. Every cake is made to order, so what you collect was assembled for your date, never for a display cabinet.
Five chocolate cakes worth ordering
The Thunder Cake is our signature and the one people come back for. Chocolate sponge layered with traditional Brazilian brigadeiro, a slow-cooked chocolate milk caramel, dense and fudgy and noticeably heavy on the fork in a way buttercream never manages. 15cm $95, 20cm $120, 25cm $165. If you have room for one chocolate cake in your life, make it this one.
The Nutella Cake is the maximalist option. Moist chocolate cake with a three-milk soak, smooth Nutella, dark chocolate ganache, then crunchy chocolate pieces on top including Ferrero Rocher. It photographs beautifully, and it turns up on a lot of Christchurch birthday tables.
The Prestige Coconut Cake sets deep dark chocolate against a creamy coconut milk caramel, wrapped in ganache and finished with Raffaello. Dark chocolate and coconut is one of the great patisserie pairings. This is ours.
Our Black Forest Cake reworks the German classic with white chocolate whipped cream in place of the traditional filling, studded with maraschino cherries and coated in chocolate shavings. No alcohol in it, so it stays an easy choice when children or non-drinkers are at the table. The wider range sits in our Black Forest collection.
The Dulce Caramel Cake leans on dulce de leche under a dark chocolate ganache. Condensed milk cooked down slowly until it goes golden and sticky enough to cling to the knife. The most Latin American of the five. Pick it if straight chocolate strikes you as a little one-note.
Chocolate desserts for guests avoiding gluten
Chocolate made without gluten has a reputation for being an afterthought. It should not be. Our Black & White Chocolate Mousse is built on a flourless brownie base under a double chocolate mousse, and it was designed without flour from the start, not adapted later. Allow three days for it, not two. The Snickers mini cake and the almond-based Caprese work the same way. Browse the lot in our no-added-gluten cakes and desserts range. The Snickers contains peanuts, and so does the Dulce Lava Cake below.
Warm chocolate desserts, made to order
Late winter in Christchurch calls for something warm. Our made-to-order dessert menu is plated in the patisserie while you wait, about ten minutes. A Chocolate Lava Cake at $20, warm dark chocolate that splits under the spoon and runs out across the plate towards the melting ice cream. A Dulce Lava Cake at $20 with candied peanut crumble. And our Signature Chocolate Fondue at $25 for sharing: warm Belgian chocolate with house toasted marshmallow, mini croissant, cookies, brownie bites and fresh fruit.
Pair one with a hot chocolate from our chocolate drinks list and you have the best half hour of your week. Better still with someone opposite you. Two spoons over one lava cake, both going in too early while it is still too hot. Better Thursday than eating it alone.
Not ready for a whole cake?
You do not have to commit to a celebration cake to eat well. Most of our signature flavours come as single cake slices at $9 to $10, and our mini cakes are one serving each at $9, including a Hot Chocolate mini cake under toasted meringue that sticks to the teeth on the way down. Trays of six at $48 or twelve at $84 are the simplest way to put several flavours in the middle of a table.
A note on wording. New Zealand labelling rules mean we write "no added gluten", never "gluten free". Our kitchen is small and without exclusive production areas for all of our different recipes, so traces may occur, and nothing is guaranteed safe for severe coeliac disease.
Picking it up
Whole cakes are made to order for collection, so allow two days. Three for some of the larger desserts, seven for petit fours. Order online from our celebration cakes range, or read the full Dhi Ferrari menu. Collection only, from The Welder on Welles Street, because we do not deliver. Otherwise walk in between 10am and 9pm Tuesday to Saturday, take a seat in the sun and let us talk you into a slice.
