A one-woman shop is quietly baking up some of the best cupcakes in Portland. Located on Hawthorne between sandwich shop Devil’s Dill and futbol bar Gol, Likely Ivy opened its doors in May 2025. The shop exclusively sells mini cupcakes, covering a range of traditional and experimental flavors and topped with a luscious, silky buttercream. But they’re also secretly vegan. There are no signs in the store or on their website advertising their vegan status. I tried the cupcakes having no clue they were vegan, and even after learning they were, I was convinced this was a mistake. But no—everything in the case is indeed plant-based.
“I don’t push or promote it,” Ivy Nacol, a self-taught baker and chef explains, adding that she prefers to just let the cupcakes speak for themselves to avoid any bias from non-vegans. “The vegan community here is so loyal and supportive and wonderful. I kind of knew they’d show up, but my goal is to appeal to non-vegans too.”
Appealing to omnivores is in Ivy’s wheelhouse—prior to opening her cupcake shop, she worked as a private chef making vegan versions of dishes that her clients, who had gone vegan for health reasons, missed most.
These skills are evident in her mini cupcakes, as the base cake is spongey but not crumbly, with just enough sweetness to counter the unclockable buttercream frosting on top. The frosting in particular is a real-life magic trick. As anyone who has looked for vegan dupes, especially for anything dairy-based, the quest can leave a trail of disappointments. However, Ivy’s buttercream frosting so immaculately replicates that depth of flavor, non-vegans will come away confused and bewildered.
“My mom called me the ‘Dairy Queen’ growing up,” Nacol says, reflecting on her past love for all things meat and dairy, adding how difficult it was to give it all up before going vegan for her love of animals. Her devotion to flavor has her standards set so high, she won’t serve anything she doesn’t feel could compete with the “real” thing. So it comes to no surprise she mastered the magic to whip up vegan buttercream.
For the cake underneath, Nacol started with the classic duo of chocolate and vanilla. The vanilla-and-sprinkles ”Unbirthday” flavor evokes the taste of all those childhood birthday parties, while the triple chocolate cupcake reminds tastebuds that there can never be too much chocolate.
The strawberry milk flavor, which pairs a berry vanilla cupcake with strawberry buttercream, brings back memories of elementary school lunches. From there, things stray more and more from the traditional: a black cherry flavor with cherry buttercream atop chocolate cake, a caramel corn flavor that combines kettle corn buttercream with a corn cake base, and a citrus cupcake with lemon buttercream atop orange-infused corn cake. There are also seasonal cupcakes on offer, like cherry blossom or raspberry rooibos for the spring. Many of the more unusual flavors, Nacol notes, have become her top sellers.
For those who don’t mind a little spice with their sweets, there’s the recently added blackberry datil. Datil, a little orange chile, is rarely seen here in Portland.
“Datil is very big in my hometown of St. Augustine, Florida,” Nacol says. Datil is Minorcan in origin, and St. Augustine has a rich Minorcan history, which Nacol’s family shares as well. It’s comparable to a habanero in heat, but also has floral, citrusy flavor to it and works well with sweeter dishes. Paired with Oregon-grown blackberries, it’s a fruity, sweet, and divine cupcake that bites back. It inadvertently acts as a tiny dedication to both Nacol’s origins and her present-day home for mini vegan cupcakes here on Hawthorne.
Likely Ivy, 1725 SE Hawthorne, Thurs-Sun noon-7 pm, likelyivy.com, @likelyivy