Meet Hilliary Hooker | Hill’s Sweet Treats Owner & Bakery Artist

We had the good fortune of connecting with Hilliary Hooker and we’ve shared our conversation below.

Hi Hilliary, do you have some perspective or insight you can share with us on the question of when someone should give up versus when they should keep going?
There’s been many times in my life when I’ve wanted to throw in the towel and give up. But then I think, “What if I just try one more time and get the results that I want? What if I finally reach my goal after all of these failed attempts?” It could be with making a new cake flavor, or mixing some icing for cookies. If I never try to use one more teaspoon of vanilla extract, the flavor can’t get to where I want it to be. If I don’t try to smooth the sides of my buttercream down a little bit more, it may never smooth down as much as I’d like it to. I could be so close to the perfection that I’m looking for, but if I were to give up, I’d never know.

Let’s talk shop? Tell us more about your career, what can you share with our community?
I am a home-based baker who makes everything from scratch just like my mom and grandma taught me. Many times for birthday, holidays, and other celebrations, dessert can be the focal point of the whole evening. I love to make sweet treats that’ll make people happy and be overjoyed to share with others around them! All of my sweet treats are custom made for each occasion. Since I was a little girl, my whole family always loved dessert and I loved making things for them. It started with just a basic pound cake recipe that my grandmother taught her daughters, and then my mother taught me. Now by this point in my baking, I’ve made some minor changes to the recipe, but my grandma is the heart and soul of it. It hasn’t always been easy to stay up late baking or rush to finish orders, but I enjoy the whole premise of baking. The creative process that it takes to not only make the dessert, but then to design and customize it to my customers liking it amazing. When a customer picks up their order and later tells me how much they loved it, is a beautiful feeling.

The Shoutout series is all about recognizing that our success and where we are in life is at least somewhat thanks to the efforts, support, mentorship, love and encouragement of others. So is there someone that you want to dedicate your shoutout to?
I’d like to dedicate my shoutout to my mom and my grandma. Not only have they taught me everything I know about baking, but they’ve taught me so much about life as a whole. For so many years, I was able to watch them both in the kitchen baking and eventually I learned simple steps from them that I can now use to produce more creative and better baked goods. To this day, my mom always encourages me to do my best. Even when I design a cookie and think it’s awful, she’ll let me down easy and help me come up with something that’s up to my standards of perfection.

Website: www.hillssweettreats.com

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Other: Email: order@hillssweettreats.com Contact #: (832) 722-6510