"Custom cake" means very different things depending on who you ask. Some places mean a photograph printed onto icing; some mean a three-tier fondant sculpture of your dog. If you are searching for custom cakes in Christchurch, it helps to know what a cake maker actually does before your hopes get up.
Here is how it works at our end.
Everything is already made to order
We do not batch-bake and hold stock: every celebration cake in our range is assembled for your collection date in our central city studio. The starting point is fresher than a cabinet cake, and you are not choosing from what is left. You are commissioning a bake.
What you choose
Flavour. The real decision. Thunder for deep chocolate and Brazilian brigadeiro, fudgy and slow on the fork. Nutella for maximum drama, dark ganache over roasted hazelnut. Tres Leches for the one everybody likes, cool and milk-soaked. Lemonade when the room wants something sharp. Prestige when it needs to feel expensive: dark chocolate first, coconut milk caramel coming up behind it. Our vanilla range is the safe landing for a mixed crowd.
Size. Four-layer cakes come in 15cm, 20cm and 25cm, cutting 12 to 15, 20 to 25 and 30 to 35 slices, more than most people expect. Mini cakes are a single serving each. Bundts and loaves come in two formats: a 20cm loaf for 8 slices, a 25cm bundt for 16.
Format. A whole cake is not always right. At a party of twenty, somebody always ends up sawing with a bread knife while the plates stack up and the ganache goes soft. Individual slices, mini desserts and petit fours all solve the "everyone gets their own" problem better than cutting a cake.
Cakes built around an occasion
We keep collections for the occasions people ask about most: birthdays, baby showers, christenings, engagements and retirements. Curated views of the same menu, filtered for what tends to suit each room.
Lead times, honestly
Two days for most whole cakes. Three for the larger desserts, the Black & White Chocolate Mousse and Romeo & Juliet cheesecake among them. Seven days for petit fours, the most labour-intensive thing we make.
You do not need to work any of this out yourself: the date picker at checkout only offers collection dates we can actually meet for what is in your cart. Ordering early still gets the widest choice of flavour.
Collection, not delivery
Pickup only. Everything is collected from our patisserie inside The Welder on Welles Street, open 10am to 9pm Tuesday to Saturday. Pick a collection slot that works around your day, and cakes are handed over boxed and assembled. Collect the day before if it suits: they keep overnight in a fridge in our packaging, no change to taste or texture.
What we do not do
We do not make off-menu cakes. No bespoke designs, no cake built to a brief. No fondant, no colourings, no sculpted decoration of any kind. Our finishes are ganache and chocolate elements, set firm and glossy, chosen from designs that already exist. Arrive with a photograph of something you want recreated and we are the wrong patisserie. Better to say that here than three emails into your planning.
A deliberate limit, not a shortcoming. Every cake on the menu is refined until it is worth putting our name on. A one-off built to a sketch cannot be held to that standard, and the cakes we make hundreds of times are the ones that come out right every time.
When to get in touch
For volume instead of bespoke design — an event, a function, trade supply — our wholesale page and event catering page are the right starting points. Our FAQ answers most of the rest, including how to transport and store what you collect.
