'DELILAH HAS HEALED MY HEART'

MasterChef Australia star Julie Goodwin's overflowing with love for her adorable granddaughter, who has her famous granny wrapped around her little finger

- Phillip Koch

Julie Goodwin lets out one of those belly laughs that put an instant smile on the faces of all in her orbit as she sheepishly admits that one of the first words her two-year-old granddaughter Delilah uttered was “cookie”.

“She’s just burst into our lives,” Julie, 52, tells Woman’s Day. “I couldn’t have foreseen what she has done to our hearts. You love your children so much, you feel like you’re going to bust with it, then a grandchild comes and a whole new part of you opens up.”

She and her husband Mick, 53, recently returned from a week holidaying on the coast south of Sydney with the entire family – including Delilah, her parents Tom, 26, and Crystal, eldest son Joe, 27, and youngest son Paddy, 25, and his girlfriend Brooke.

“It was fricking unreal,” says Julie. “We’re all very close. It’s like herding cats. We’ve all got different commitments and it took months to nail them down. We have dinner together all the time, but to have a whole week together was just beautiful.”

Julie unashamedly loves that Joe and Paddy still live at home on New South Wales’ Central Coast, in the same house she and Mick bought long before she beat Poh Ling Yeow to win the inaugural season of MasterChef Australia in 2009.

“I’ve never thought, ‘I can’t wait until they leave home’. I dread them all being gone,” she admits, explaining that Tom and Crystal live only five minutes away, allowing her precious daily time with Delilah.