Flourless is not a substitution here. The Black & White Chocolate Mousse was never built with flour in the first place, which is why we can offer it to a table where someone is avoiding gluten without swapping in a lesser version of the recipe. It is one of our large desserts at $100, and it needs three days.
What a mousse cake actually is
A mousse is a set cream with air folded through it. Get it right and it holds a clean edge on the knife but collapses the moment it reaches your mouth, which is a fair test of a kitchen. You can see the construction most clearly in the miniature version, which carries the same name: a flourless brownie base, dense and fudgy with an intense cocoa profile, under layers of velvety double chocolate mousse. The contrast is the point: the base is substantial, the mousse light and silky, and the two arrive one after the other rather than together.
Why flourless matters when you are buying for other people
Buying a centrepiece for someone else means guessing at a guest list you did not write, and a flourless dessert removes one of the guesses. New Zealand's labelling rules changed and we no longer make blanket dietary claims, so the accurate wording is that this is made with no added gluten, and that 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. Two more things worth knowing before you order for a group. Nothing we make is made with no added gluten and no added dairy at the same time, so one item cannot cover a guest who needs both. And the Snickers mini contains peanuts, so ask about nuts rather than assuming. We never claim anything in the range is nut free.
Size, price and how many it feeds
A 20cm dessert serves ten to twelve, more than most people expect from a single round cake, so count heads before deciding you need something larger. If you do, the specialty layer cakes run 15cm for twelve to fifteen, 20cm for twenty to twenty-five and 25cm for thirty to thirty-five, all four layers, all the same price whichever flavour you pick. If you would rather each guest had a whole thing of their own, the miniature is one serving and sits with our mini desserts.
When it is the right thing to give
This is a dessert for someone who has said more than once that they do not really like sweet things. It is chocolate rather than sugar: the intense cocoa of the flourless base holds the mousse in check, and it finishes clean. That suits an adult milestone where the cake is the centrepiece but the room is not a children's party. It also works as a gift without decoration doing the work, which matters, because we do not do fondant, custom colourings or bespoke decoration. The finish is chocolate and ganache, and you choose from the designs that exist.
Taste it before you commit
A large dessert is worth eating once before you buy it for twelve. Come in with whoever is helping you host, order a Black and White miniature each and a coffee, and settle it in twenty minutes rather than by text. The Romeo and Juliet miniature is the obvious comparison, white chocolate cheesecake with guava jam on a no-added-gluten shortcrust, and the full-size version is the other large dessert, with the same three days' notice. The Caprese and the whole petit four range are also made with no added gluten, and the same flourless brownie recipe turns up bagged as Brownie Bites, and the rest sit in our No Added Gluten Cakes and Desserts collection. For a chocolate contrast, the Thunder is our Brazilian brigadeiro layer cake, and it sits among the rest of our chocolate desserts.
Ordering and visiting
The Black and White needs three days rather than the usual two days. The checkout date picker only offers dates the kitchen can meet for what is in your cart, and the miniature in the cabinet needs no notice at all. Collect the day before if that suits you better: it keeps in a fridge in our packaging overnight with no change to taste or texture. Collection is in person from our patisserie inside The Welder on Welles Street in the central city, since we do not deliver. We are open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 3pm Saturday.
