To those who saw her winning ways with desserts on the the popular cooking competition in 2011, it would come as no surprise that Kate has had a lifelong craving for chocolate.

Kate, admitted to her audience that she buys chocolate in 2.5kg bags - an expensive habit now that she has acquired a preference for the higher quality blends used on the high-budget MasterChef.

“If I get a craving for chocolate, there is little else that can satisfy it,” she said.

“I tried fruit as my mother suggested, I even tried going for long walks but nothing satisfies like a big lump of chocolate.”

Kate said the other great need in her life - “a deep longing of the soul” - was satisfied by her strong religious faith, which helped her endure the separation from her husband and children during the many months of filming MasterChef.

Kate said without her faith and support from her family, friends and MasterChef producers, she might have left the show in the early weeks.

Kate said her faith had also helped to keep her grounded during the making of the show.

“The things we were doing were so different from what I thought I would ever do, but I wasn’t nervous,” she said.

“It is just food and this was just television,” she said. “We weren’t saving lives in there.”

A stay-at-home mother, Kate said she had never expected to win MasterChef.

“When the top 50 contestants stood on Cockatoo Island and they said ‘one of you will be the next MasterChef,’ I looked around and thought ‘I wonder which one of them it will be?’,” she said.

Kate demonstrated recipes featured in her new book The Sweet Life, including a liberal dose of chocolate in her Honeycomb with Chocolate Dipping Sauce.

Kate’s also had a simple tip for success in the kitchen.

“Cooking is like any skill - you just have to practice it,” she said.