“Making it into the Top 24 has been a once in a lifetime experience,” exclaims Kat von Witt, the latest contestant to taste the sting of Elimination. “I’d never even contemplated entering something like MasterChef and I’m delighted I got as far as I did.”

Kath’s exit from the competition came off the back of a Maggie Beer conceived Pressure Test. She may be Australia’s culinary sweetheart, but as MasterChef history has proved trying to recreate a Maggie dish is a foreboding exercise.

“When she walked into the kitchen, I was hoping like mad it wasn’t going to be a sweet,” Kath admits, having made no secret of the fact that savoury cooking is by far her preferred domain. “I was also very pleased it wouldn’t be the 8-Textured Chocolate Cake! I did recall how difficult some of the other challenges she’d previously set were though, like the terrine!”

Despite conceding that she hadn’t baked a cake in some time, Kath was still confident in her ability to get the job done. “Although I rarely make cakes, I do understand the principles and I was feeling confident that I could make the cake, the ice-cream and the biscuit,” she says. “What I wasn’t sure of was how they’d do against Julia or Andrew’s!”

Despite an early hiccup with the sugar syrup, Kath’s progress through the challenge was steady and incident-free. Known for marching to her own culinary beat, Kath insists that her cake undercooking was neither an oversight nor failure to follow the recipe correctly. “I took the cake out of the oven as it had been in for 10 minutes longer than the recipe stated,” she clarifies. “That’s the problem with cakes and ovens – it depends on the vagaries of the individual oven and ingredients on the day. Overall I was happy with my performance and very disappointed that that was the challenge to send me home. I really did my best.”

Kath is now concentrating her efforts on conceiving ways to align her day job as an art gallery director with her passion for food and cooking. “At the moment I’m setting up a community kitchen garden at the Hawkesbury Regional Museum and hope to incorporate food production, sustainability and cooking into our events and programs,” she explains. “I am researching and developing a few publication ideas. Food is an important part of my life and I would love to be able to incorporate into my life in some sort of professional capacity.”