Natasha LaSala
My Story
How It Began
I grew up in Brooklyn, Queens and Brewster NY- my family was slowly trying to inch their way up to the country. Like most bakers from the tender age of 5 I started making cookies. My mother would prop me up on a stool lay out some Christmas cookie cutters and I’d start pressing away; It was love at first sight. Baking became my favorite pastime and for a long time that’s all it would ever be.
Early Days
Fast forward to my senior year of college, reality hits and that cozy cushion of academia was coming to an end. In 2010 with my business degree in tow, I came up with the best possible career, banking. And it didn’t stop there, by December of 2014 I packed my car and headed west for sin city Las Vegas where I went on selling timeshare, used cars and then solar! I was chasing money and not my passion. The only constant denominator was my baking, I baked wherever my next career venture took me and showcased them for all my coworkers. I loved piling my hands in a web of cookie dough, painting sugar cookies like watercolor, whipping up meringue to make pavlova and testing 5 variations of ganache. I just loved it all.
It was the year 2020 when the word quarantine became part of everyone’s vocabulary. So naturally I decided to get social. After refusing to entertain online dating I took the plunge and, met a strikingly handsome chef whose first question to me was, if you could eat anything for the rest of your life what would it be? He spoke my love language and we married 2 1/2 years later.
Natasha's Today
One night after taking some chocolate pecan brittle cookies out of the oven to have ready for our morning meeting at work, I turned to my (then fiancé) and said, you know there’s one dessert that stands out in my mind, this pot de crème I baked at a cooking class in Sur La Table like 5 years ago. It was a French themed date night class and being single at the time I decided to go anyways. The moment I took my first bite time slowed and felt the silky sweetness course through my body seducing my every limb. I promise I bake and don’t write romance novels but that was seriously my experience. I never had a reaction to dessert like that before. My fiancé (now husband and co-owner) stunned and probably now turned on said, then we need to make this again!
So for the next 6 months I baked and baked and baked, trial testing after trail testing until a menu started to come together and in December 2022 Luscious Batter was officially born.
A dessert should be more than just sweet, it should prolong those tastebuds after a nice meal, make you pause and feel something if felt numb after a grinding workday or recall some positive memory not thought of for a long time.