CARY, Maine — A Cary baker, famous for her home baked delicacies, put every single recipe she can remember ever baking into a cookbook that sold out of its first printing before it even arrived on Tuesday.
Suzanne Hiltz, owner of Das NiederHiltz Haus in the small Aroostook County community of Cary, came up with the idea for Das NiederHiltz Haus Family Recipes, a collection of more than 100 top favorites, when she started having health problems this summer.
After hours and hours standing on her feet baking in her licensed home bakery, she would have so much swelling in her legs, it was painful to walk or stand, she said. Despite being only 40, Hiltz worries about heart failure, something her father died of at a very young age with no warning. And early next week, after a nuclear stress test, she will hopefully have a final diagnosis.
But like she has done before, Hiltz created something new out of a potentially dire situation. If she can’t continue to bake for long periods at a time, she will share her famous recipes and also teach others how to create her breads, pies, authentic German soft pretzels and other authentic German/Swiss recipes like plum spice cake and Springerle cookies.
“Even if I’ve slowed down my baking, I still want my community to have access to these fine recipes made with love,” Hiltz said.
Several years ago, what started as a quest for Hiltz to find relief from painful black fly bites became a fast-growing business in addition to her regionally famed bakery.
The mother of five, Hiltz experimented, creating a broadleaf plantain salve that works on those painfully notorious northern Maine bites. Her so-called Chapped Hide line of salves and moisturizers, which have sold as far away as Hawaii, earned her an Aroostook County Top Gun award as well as a Maine Community Development Block Grant.
In addition to her many entrepreneurial endeavors, Hiltz also holds down a day job as an ed tech in the building construction class at Houlton’s Region Two School of Applied Technology.
And just like the national appeal of her Chapped Hide line, some of the Das NiederHiltz Haus Family Recipes cookbooks are already heading out to Colorado and Texas, she said.
Her famed culinary creations are a big part of the draw, but so is Hiltz herself, who tries to make the people in her path feel special. Plus, she’s included her 1,000-plus Facebook followers in every step of the cookbook’s journey, even occasionally asking about what they would like in the book — which also reflects her fun take on life.
“They say, ‘never trust a skinny baker,’” Hiltz says in her new cookbook. “I can assure you I’m always working off a few extra pounds every year due, in part, to taste testing everything even if I already know it’s good!”
Letting followers in on her progress, she posted a sampling of recipes, like her oldest son Jonah’s favorite meatloaf.
“My 85th recipe logged! Here’s a sneak preview of one of the main dishes,” Hiltz posted. “The best part of this process is the memories associated with each recipe. Jonah and I agreed that this Thanksgiving we will serve meatloaf!”
Jonah’s meatloaf includes barbecue sauce for seasoning and is topped with a coating of mashed potatoes and cheese.
The cookbook has a huge selection of breads, desserts and cookies, she said. But she also has included some main dishes, salads and miscellaneous recipes that are special to her family, even if she never sold them to the public, she said.
“I do have the Bavarian lye dipping method for pretzels,” Hiltz added. “Some cupcake recipes and frostings have been omitted because there are just too many.”
But even with the cookbook, some fans are already putting in Thanksgiving bakery orders — peanut butter pie, pistachio cream pie, apple scotch pie, sweet potato marshmallow bake, graham cracker vanilla pudding, applesauce donuts, ginger molasses cookies — with comments posted on Facebook such as, “When you take Thanksgiving orders I want butterscotch things and the other one (almond joy) or something.”
All the books already sold have been personally autographed with love and wrapped in gift bags for pickup, she said.
Hiltz is putting together a second printing and will order it on Nov. 15 to make sure the books are in time for Christmas.
The cookbooks are $39.95 and can be ordered online at shopdashaus.com.
