Let me rephrase that. I was the world's untidiest cook.

The world's untidiest cook until Margaret Fulton and I shared a kitchen bench.

A friend had insisted I go to cooking classes now that I was on the eve of breaking free of endless spaghetti bolognaise. She'd suggested various places all run by cooks in whom I had no faith. They were too fancy - although probably not in the current context of a blast chiller and a sous vide in every kitchen. Then I heard that Margaret Fulton was releasing her latest book (with her daughter Suzanne Gibbs) and offering one-on-one classes to journalists. She clearly thought we needed help. This is how I found myself alone in a spotless kitchen with Australia's Greatest Cook.

This was the woman who'd inspired me, aged 12, to make my award-winning pavlova where I beat adult cooks at their peak (sorry). Decades and children on, her recipe is still the one to beat. It's the staple birthday cake in this house and also my only foolproof dessert. For a woman who loves sweets, I'm terrible at making them.

But having a cooking class with Margaret Fulton meant an opportunity to defeat my arch nemesis - the brandy snap. Yes, I'd tried to make them before but they refused to come off the baking tray and in the end I had to take the meat mallet to them and scatter the shards on ice-cream. Tasty but ugly. I wanted the curled crisp beauty of the perfect brandy snap, the epitome of afternoon tea haute cuisine.

I was nervous and I'm never nervous. I've talked to strangers for a living for many years and status doesn't faze me. I've even interrupted the Queen to ask her about pyjamas. But in my life, Fulton carried more majesty than the real one. We get to work immediately but the one thing I notice is how tidy the kitchen is. A place for everything and everything in its place. Aprons, stacks of tea-towels, a container with wooden spoon handles (necessary for the brandy snap project), another with wooden spoons. There are 20 baking sheets and they are all flat, clean, absolutely no baked-on gunk. The floor is so spotless you could have a 20 minute rule (as opposed to the 20 second rule).

"It's important to have good equipment," she told me, gently chiding.

So I spent the next hour sifting, melting, stirring, grating. Under her eye I measured ground ginger and golden syrup. I sliced butter to weigh it. Apparently, I'm meant to learn to do it by eye. The first batch was a disaster. I was too slow to lever the snaps off the baking sheets and they won't curl around the wooden spoon handle. Cracked, crumbled. Margaret, disappointed. Have another go! An hour later, the snaps come off the handles quickly and cool-hand cook is wrapping them into perfect cylinders, so perfect they could be telescopes. I've made a dozen, fine, lacy, crisps.

"You've done it right this time." I've just had the elephant stamp of approval and am very excited. But then she looked around the kitchen and her face crumpled.

"When you are cooking, keep the place in immaculate order," she said. Have I already used the word reprovingly?

I looked around myself, shocked at the devastation I have wrought in the Queen's Kitchen. I start wiping benches and rinsing items under hot water, screwing lids back on jars; and putting butter and cream in fridge. Yes, the cream has been out of the fridge for a couple of hours. I know she wanted to ask if this is what my own kitchen looked like at home. I know I wanted to tell her.

The answer was yes but it's not like that any more. I came home from that afternoon with more than a Tupperware container filled with perfect brandy snaps ready to be piped with cream. I came home with a resolve to run a Fulton kitchen. I bought better spatulas. I make sure I have all the ingredients before I start the recipe. I'm better at keeping an eye out for burning butter.

Margaret Fulton made a big impact on me and after I heard the news that she'd died, I took out all my Margaret Fulton cookbooks, signed and unsigned; and leafed through them all. The pages were stained and spattered.

But I never need to look at the pavlova recipe any more. It's still in my head as is the look on her face when she observed my chaotic cooking style. Yes, your impact was on all Australian cooks. But not too many get to say that they learned to clean up from Margaret Fulton.