10 | EDIBLE PORTLAND WINTER 2025 Content Warning: This article discusses eating disorders and may be triggering to some readers. If you or someone you know needs help, call the National Eating Disorders Association’s hotline at 800–931–2237. It’s official—mushrooms are my new favorite dessert, and Nikki Arcé is to blame. The pastry chef is the mastermind behind Camellia, a vegan patisserie where the sweets are not too sweet and the flavors are decadently seasonal: think black tea fig brownies, apple brioche buns, and my freshly minted favorite—the Candy Cap Shroom Panna Cotta. What, you might ask, is that? Picture a glammed-up, gluten-free version of an Oreo “dirt cup.” Instead of chocolate pudding, though, the base layer here is a creamy medley of cacao and candy cap mushrooms, topped with a thick layer of coconut shortbread “dirt” and the cutest-to-boot mushroom meringue. It’s a confection that’s managed to both tickle my sweet tooth and blow my mind—one bite and I could swear it was sweetened with maple syrup, yet Arcé promises none was used. Those notes of warm, caramelized sugar? That, she insists, is all candy cap. Playful, balanced, and richly nuanced, it’s the kind of dessert that perfectly encapsulates Arcé’s mission: to get people excited about just how expansive vegan pastry can be. “I’ve had people come up and say, ‘That can’t be vegan—it’s too pretty to eat!’” Arcé laughs. “And I’m like, ‘No, you’re in good hands—vegans can have pretty things too!’” Part of what makes Arcé so talented as a pastry chef is her ability to embrace duality: aged teas share the spotlight with freshly picked produce, French techniques draw out Asian flavors. Her canelés may follow tradition in form, but don't be fooled— they're modernized with a vegan-friendly twist. Arcé has long championed a mindset of multitudes in her personal life, as well. She's proud of every layer that weaves through her identity, especially the ones that seem to contradict one another. Take the following: she's Latina, but she knows more Japanese than Spanish. She's tattooed in numbers, but she deeply, deeply hates math (more on that later). And perhaps most importantly, Arcé is a pastry chef who celebrates food, but she's also sometimes afraid of it. Throughout her life, Arcé has struggled on and off with orthorexia, an eating disorder characterized by an obsession with healthy food. "It's tough because it wasn't obvious," Arcé says. "People can be very dismissive of it, like, 'Oh, you're just healthy.' But if I had a bite of a cookie, I would freak out for five hours." In college, her symptoms took a turn for the worse. Eager to pursue a lifelong passion for vegan food, Arcé enrolled in a nutrition Reimagining Sweetness with Camellia’s Nikki Arcé by Clare Ling and images by Aaron Lee
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