Julie Bonanno doesn't have much of a sweet tooth. Even though she is renowned as a fantastic baker in her family and was a once constant fixture in the baking section of the Illawarra show circuit.
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"I'm not a big sweet eater, I love cheesecake, but I'm not a cake person," she says.
"I love to bake, but if I'm baking I'll have one bit when it comes out of the oven, but I won't go back for another piece. It's just not me."
Bonanno is set to put her skills to the test in The Great Australian Bake Off, a new incarnation of the originally British show that pits 10 excellent but unprofessional bakers against each other in a series of challenges. While she now lives in Shepparton, Victoria with her husband and kids, she grew up in Albion Park on her parents' farm.
She started dabbling in biscuits and cakes when she was only six years old and began entering local shows soon after, cooking up a slew of treats for shows including Albion Park, Dapto, Kiama, Kangaroo Valley and Moss Vale, and credits her mother with getting her interested in baking.
She has won countless sashes and prizes for her efforts in these shows, regularly progressing to the Sydney Easter Show and having some of her recipes featured in show cookbooks.
Bonanno's speciality is intricately decorated cakes - a trait she passed down to her daughter Lucy, who was a contestant in the 2010 series of Junior Masterchef - though she also enjoys making biscuits, sponges and more traditional fare such as bread and rice puddings.
What she whips up in her kitchen is not decided by how the finished product will look or taste, but how challenging the method is.
"Baking for me has never been about slapping it together for an end, it's about doing the best I can and making it as detailed as possible so the people that I'm making it for are really going to appreciate it."
The time limits on some of the challenges in a show can be difficult for her as a perfectionist.
"The pressure for me was the fact that I am a perfectionist when I cook and when I bake and with this show there are time limits, and the time limits make you do things you wouldn't do at home," she says.
"For example, if you baked a pie or cake and knew it had to cool before you took it out of the tin and the time limit was up, you had to get it out and things don't go well."
"I knew going into the show that because I like to do things right, the time limits were always going to be the limit for me."
She thinks her getting-things-done attitude is why she was tagged with the moniker of the "Commando Baker" in the lead-up to the series, even though she says she doesn't consider herself to be bossy.
The Great Australian Bake Off will air later this year on WIN.
