Search for an ice cream cake in Christchurch and you will mostly find the freezer aisle: a slab of vanilla and chocolate, rock-hard from the centre out, sweet in a way that stops being interesting after two bites. There is a better version of the idea, and it comes from Brazil.
It is called bolo gelado — literally "iced cake" — and it is on the made-to-order menu at our patisserie inside The Welder.
What a bolo gelado actually is
Our Bolo Gelado is a Brazilian iced coconut cake soaked in three-milk sauce, served with vanilla ice cream and a roasted coconut crumble. The soak is the part that matters: it keeps the crumb soft even when cold, which is exactly the problem a supermarket ice cream cake never solves. Instead of frozen sponge, you get a cake that stays tender against something genuinely cold.
It is assembled fresh in the patisserie rather than pulled from a freezer, so it arrives at the right temperature rather than fifteen minutes past it. You will find it on our made-to-order dessert menu alongside the plated desserts we finish to order.
Why the three-milk soak changes everything
Three-milk soaking — tres leches — is a South American technique that runs through a lot of our menu. Evaporated milk, condensed milk and cream are poured over a baked sponge, which drinks them up and holds them. The cake ends up dense and wet rather than dry and crumbly, and it holds cold beautifully.
If the technique appeals but the ice cream does not, we wrote about the classic tres leches cake separately.
Coconut, without the ice cream
Coconut is the flavour doing the heavy lifting here, and it turns up right across the menu. The Anthill is our Brazilian coconut bundt. The Tropical Coconut Cake pairs it with pineapple as a full celebration cake, and there is a single slice version if you just want to try it. The Prestige takes the same flavour somewhere richer, wrapping coconut milk caramel in dark chocolate ganache.
Other things worth ordering cold
Our Pudim Caramel Flan is the other great Brazilian cold dessert — dense, silky and made with no added gluten, though 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. On the drinks side, our dessert-inspired thickshakes turn cabinet favourites into something you drink, and the Dark Chocolate Thickshake, an iced chocolate or an affogato will all see you through a warm Canterbury afternoon.
If you need something to feed a crowd
Made-to-order desserts are eaten here, not carried home, so for a party you want a whole cake instead. Our celebration cakes are built for that, and individual mini desserts work well when you would rather give everyone their own.
How to order
The bolo gelado is made to order in the patisserie — come in and we will plate it for you. Whole cakes need two days' notice, or three for the larger desserts. Browse the full Dhi Ferrari menu or take a look at what is in the cabinet as single slices. We are inside The Welder on Welles Street, open 10am to 6pm Tuesday to Friday and 10am to 3pm on Saturday.
