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Natasha Lobban
Sponge
WHEN a bride creates a sponge on the day of her wedding, you know she’s serious about baking.
Natasha Lobban, of Eldorado, did just that in April, keen to offer more than fruit cake to her guests.
But on the big day itself?
“Everyone thought I was mad, but I was happy to do it,” she said.
“Cooking calms me down.
“It gave me something to do on the morning apart from just sitting there getting my hair and make-up done.
“It was all familiar and comforting – just what I needed in the middle of the craziness of the day.”
Natasha admitted to some nervous feelings during the process.
“There was a brief moment of panic as the side of one sponge stuck to the side, but it was only for a moment,” she wrote on her blog.
“The moral of this story – let the bride bake sponge cake.”
A freelance journalist and farmer, Natasha grew up in a farming family at Ariah Park.
“I always enjoyed cooking, even from when I was little,” she said.
“I’d race home from school and my brothers and sister would want to go outside and do farm things; I'd always want to make pikelets or muffins or those sort of early-on recipes.”
Her mother, grandmothers and great-grandmother influenced her in the kitchen.
“I learned from all of them really, I'd cook with whoever would cook with me,” she said.
Natasha, who arrived on the Border in 2007, now runs a commercial beef herd known as Kilmuir Angus with her new husband Dean.
She loves experimenting in her farmhouse kitchen.
“I probably get a little bit obsessed with modifying different recipes,” she said.
“I went through a massive ice-cream phase a couple of years back. I'm probably in a preserving phase at the moment and I’m planning to turn this into a business.
“It's a great combination of the old and the new. I think that's probably how I was taught to cook really; throw a bit of this in there, a bit of that in there.”
Natasha’s mother discovered this sponge recipe more than 20 years ago and used it for a shearer who had coeliac disease, a condition far less understood back then.
"I just love the taste, but being gluten-free was an added bonus, as two of my bridesmaids couldn’t have gluten,” Natasha said.
“Most importantly it tastes fantastic, it's one of my favourite cakes to eat.”
Six things I can't cook without: I have a new oven that I love, my scales, my zester, home grown eggs, my copper preserving pan and my sieve.
