Oksana Shchelgachova photograph by Tim Robison

Editor’s Note (October 2024): We love and celebrate our mountain communities; however, following the devastation of Hurricane Helene, many areas remain inaccessible for travel. Please check DriveNC.gov’s travel map for the latest on traveling to these areas.

Oksana Shchelgachova can’t sleep. Not yet. She’s up late, the scent of chocolate wafting through her kitchen as she folds together layers of butter and dough. She’s baking airy chocolate sponge cake and whipping up fluffy mousse and melting Belgian chocolate that she’ll then cool and craft into delicate flourishes that she promptly freezes.

The pastry artist and chocolatier will be up early, too. Leaf-peeping season is one of the busiest times of the year at her Highlands shop, Edelweiss Pastry Boutique. Last October, she figures, she only slept about three to four hours each night. This late-night prep gives her the head start she needs.

“In the morning, when I open the door, I inhale the smell — the smell of my kitchen — and I become a different person,” Shchelgachova says. “I’m a chef! I know exactly what to do and how.”

As the sun rises, she’ll fuse many of the elements she worked on the night before. When she’s finished, two dozen larger-than-life red-capped mushrooms will sprout from her worktable like something out of a storybook. Her signature — and most complex — creation and Edelweiss’s No. 1 best seller: the mushroom petit gâteau, or little cake.

At her Highlands shop, Oksana Shchelgachova’s imagination runs wild. “I love everything that gives free rein to fantasy,” she says. “Every time I make a dessert, I fall in love with it.” photograph by Tim Robison

Its cap is made from a thin layer of crunchy pâte sablée — a crumbly, cookie-like crust — beneath a dome of white chocolate-mascarpone mousse that’s filled with red currant confit and coated with a shiny red mirror glaze. Its stem is dark chocolate mousse filled with black currant confit, surrounded by a thin layer of textured white chocolate. It grows next to a chocolate sponge cake “log,” which is covered with delicate green “moss” and studded with tiny chocolate daisies.

Like adding an artist’s signature, Shchelgachova gently brushes more moss onto delicate dark chocolate leaves that look like they’ve fallen off the trees just outside the shop. She then places them on top of each mushroom. This batch has taken, from start to finish, three days. Each one is a miniature masterpiece, and each bite confirms that it tastes like one, too. The mousse is both fluffy and creamy, and smooth as velvet. The confit balances the chocolate. Somehow, none of it is too sweet, and every tiny detail is edible. Depending on the season and the whims of Shchelgachova, the ingredients and flavors change. But one thing doesn’t: By the end of the day, they’ll all be eaten. Come to think of it, she wonders, should she make more?

• • •

Born into a family of bakers in the Donetsk region of Ukraine — her mom and dad owned a restaurant and made cheese and bread — at 5 years old, Shchelgachova began absorbing the basics and subtleties of baking and her parents’ passion for their profession.

“I remember the smell of sourdough bread and these big cheese-making machines,” she says. “And I remember Mama stirring. Papa was like the boss. And I remember this feeling of preparation, even though it was totally different from what I am making now.”

After graduating from the National Art Academy in Kyiv with a degree in art design, she followed her heart to Australia, where she earned a second degree from the Australian Patisserie Academy and began to combine her eye for design with her love of confections. First, she trained to be a chocolatier, learning how to create edible sculptural masterpieces. But soon, she wanted to take her talents further and incorporate her chocolate into cakes, later studying under world-famous pastry chefs.

Fall is one of Shchelgachova’s favorite times of year. She fills Edelweiss’s pastry cases with petit gâteau mushrooms and pumpkins, éclairs covered with colorful chocolate leaves, and Halloween-themed pastries. photograph by Tim Robison

Nearly 15 years ago, she arrived in Highlands, and in 2017 began a pastry business from her home kitchen, collaborating with local hospitality and fine cuisine juggernauts like Old Edwards Inn, Wolfgang’s Restaurant & Wine Bistro, The Park on Main, and Cullasaja Club. In 2018, she was hired as the pastry chef at a new restaurant, where she was given free rein to test out new ideas, to experiment and play, to see what stuck.

“For every single pastry chef, what is their weapon?” Shchelgachova asks. Her voice is soft but strong, with a lilting Ukrainian accent, and there’s a fire in her eyes. “It’s their recipe. This is my power. Every pastry chef has their own signature. It might be considered ‘better’ if someone else does it differently, but this is mine. I love when people love mine.”

• • •

Slowly, Shchelgachova’s own signature concept — edible art — took shape, and finally, in May 2023, she opened Edelweiss in a charming white house surrounded by hydrangea bushes near downtown Highlands. Each morning, customers order warm pastries, like almond croissants and cinnamon buns, and sip coffee in the cool mountain air on the expansive front porch — or cozied up inside by the fire. And each afternoon, a small line forms by the glass display cases. Everyone wants a peek at Shchelgachova’s edible art exhibit: palm-size lemons and strawberries, apples and pumpkins, pears and cherries, so detailed — the stems, the dimples and seeds, the colors — that they look plucked out of still-life paintings. Her famous mushrooms and acorns appear to have been gathered from the floor of a fairy tale forest. It’s enough to inspire spontaneous applause and oohs and aahs.

Each of Shchelgachova’s tarts, petit gâteaux, éclairs, bouchées (a small pastry shell with a sweet cream filling), and entremets (a small layered cake encased in mousse and enrobed in a glaze) is edible to the last bite, but is so beautiful that it may temporarily break your heart to cut into it — and make you wonder if it breaks hers.

An Edelweiss acorn is actually a whole hazelnut dipped in smooth chocolate filling, coated in milk chocolate, and covered in hazelnut pieces. photograph by Tim Robison

“It doesn’t matter how quickly they are eaten,” she says. “What matters is what emotions they evoke in you, and those emotions will stay with you forever. The feeling of special attention is the most important thing in my work, to make a person feel special and loved.”

Each one represents not only Shchelgachova’s perfectionism and artistry but also her imagination.

“I just see desserts in everything,” she says. “I feel them and want to make them. Take a bee [for example]. Well, a bee is shaped like an egg; you dip it in yellow glaze, and then you use chocolate to make the lines on its body, two wings, and a stinger. Then what is inside? Of course — honey cake, right? Things like caramel, a little bit of Maldon salt to balance the sweetness. And something crunchy — not chewy — on the bottom …” She trails off, lost in thought and brimming with inspiration. She pushes black-rimmed glasses up on the bridge of her nose. “I see it,” she says. “I just need silence, and then I know how to make it.”

Shchelgachova delights in the challenge. In addition to the dozens of different desserts that line the display cases at Edelweiss, she also makes intricate and elaborate cakes and chocolate sculptures, which she works on in between her daily bakes — a feat, considering that, at her busiest, she once sold several hundred mushrooms and acorns in a single day. Because her time is finite, she seeks out more complex bakes and designs, always pondering how to take a piece to the next level.

Aside from the sponge cake moss, Shchelgachova made every detail on this German chocolate birthday cake out of Belgian chocolate. Photography courtesy of Edelweiss Pastry Boutique

“You want a carrot cake?” she says. “OK, let’s make carrot cake, but let’s make it more interesting. Let’s put smoked oranges inside, let’s bake the nuts more deeply and caramelize them. I would love to make something special for you to say, ‘Oh, my God, this is the best carrot cake ever.’ ” She pauses. “I’m trying to only take a wedding cake every 10 days … Is that a lot?” she asks with a laugh. “This is boundless happiness: When you work 20 hours a day, you fall asleep on the go. You understand that you need to sleep. But you can’t wait until the morning to go through it again — it’s pure love.”

So Shchelgachova can’t sleep. Not yet. Glazes are setting. Chocolate is freezing. Ideas are swirling. She’ll stay up late, soak in the silence.

Soon, she says, she’ll start on a new cake. “A beautiful cake. An old stump. And an owl should come out of the top. I don’t know how it’s going to turn out yet. It’s still up there,” she says, pointing at her temple and smiling.

Edelweiss Pastry Boutique
892 North Fourth Street
Highlands, NC 28741
(828) 200-2700
facebook.com/p/Edelweiss-Highlands-100063010552186/