Roxi's sweet journey from MasterChef winner to Far South Coast cafe

After numerous video calls, mountains of paperwork, and visa organising, Roxi Wardman MaClou and her young family made the 10,219-kilometre journey from Durban, South Africa, to Eden.

"It's been a whirlwind of emotions, leaving the country I've known my whole life to this place, but I absolutely adore Eden," Roxi said with a smile.

"It's so quaint, and I love the community already."

Although the 37-year-old joined Toast Cafe Eden only a handful of weeks ago, she was thankful that the community had already embraced her and her family.

"The kids are thriving, and I feel like I am also thriving, and it's just good to live out my passion and my dream," she told Bega District News.

"My son loves fishing. He's been fishing every weekend. He caught an Australian salmon, and I made fishcakes. He was stoked with himself."

Roxi said cooking was part of her family.

"My mum is Portuguese, so I have always been surrounded by aunties and uncles, and granny on the Portuguese side, and watched them cook," she said.

As a qualified pastry chef who dabbled in cakes, Roxi looked forward to bringing her treats to Toast Cafe, some of which were created during MasterChef South Africa.

"It's so cliche, you enter the show to change your life, but it really did," Roxi said.

"We had to wait six months to find out if we had won or not.

"They didn't announce it right there when we were recording; they wanted it to be different to the previous seasons and be more of a surprise."

After the show, Roxi recalled the emotion of returning to her previous life as an assistant train driver for a single week before she handed in her resignation.

"[In MasterChef] you are around people who were very like-minded and food-oriented," she said.

"Whatever you wanted to cook in the house as practice, you'd tell [the show] and they'd bring you duck breast or salmon, fancy ingredients.

"You didn't have to pay for it. You also had all these special knives.

"Then you get flung back into the real world, you go to your cupboard, and there's nothing fancy.

"You cut something and your knife isn't sharp enough, so you start crying."

Roxi was crowned the South Africa's season three winner during a live show surrounded by her fellow contestants, family and the media.

Since moving to Australia, she hadn't added any savoury meals to Eden's menu, yet, but had included some sweet additions.

These included a salted caramel, dark chocolate tart, and a matcha strawberry lamington with edible gold leaf.

"I think it's about learning the customer base and what they do and don't like, because I am really winging it with the sweet stuff and hoping they enjoy it," Roxi said with a laugh.

"Food and the trends are different to South Africa.

"Here it's poached eggs for everything, there it's fried eggs, and the oily, the better. So I'm still learning."