Now, in her fifth cook book, Hansen is answering the age old question What can I bring? when you need to make something delicious and easy to share with those you care about.

What can I bring? hit the book shelves on Tuesday and the Central Western Daily spoke to Hansen about her new cookbook and how she brings it all together.

"Often when we're invited over and they say, what can I bring? And they say 'oh, a potato salad or whatever, you can have a bit of a brain freeze. I know I do," she said.

"I've got walls of cookbooks, and I'm like, which one? So I hope this is the kind of book you can open and find the answer to that question pretty easily."

This book, she feels reflects her life as a writer now, her kids are growing up and she has more time to create delicious things for more people.

"My kids are getting a bit older, so I'm kind of in a different headspace, in terms of feeding my family," she said.

"I can see there's an evolution there [through the five books[, maybe it's evolved you know, as my influences and preferences change. I feel really excited about this book."

"My hope is that ultimately, they have a bit of a through line, which is getting people feeling relaxed and encouraged, happy cooking and they're not stressed at all, because it's all pretty simple food."

Hansen also aims to give people confidence in the kitchen and confidence in hosting their loved ones.

"I also wanted to make people feel or help people feel very relaxed about giving people guidance, you know? Like to actually organise a gathering and not feel awkward to say could you bring something because I think everybody's really happy to contribute, but we just need direction sometimes as well," she said.

"Even if it's a nice bottle of wine and bread or whatever, I think everyone's just so grateful for any contribution. I just want to take the pressure off."

Hansen isn't a trained chef or cook, her background is magazines, food magazines in fact.

The former features editor studied journalism at university and spent her 20s working in the magazine industry. It was here she learnt the skills of recipe writing.

"I was a features editor and part of that was calling up chefs we'd done profiles on and asking for recipes and then we have to put them into format and test them," Hansen said.

"I did a lot of sub-editing and working through recipes, I learned how to put them together during my magazine time."

Eventually she made the move over the mountains to the Orange region and on a venison farm where her and her husband would regularly go to the Sydney markets to sell their produce. Here she started her newsletter featuring venison from the farm, which grew into a blog and newsletter for other people's produce available at the markets.

"It wasn't until we moved to Orange and we had our own products that we were selling that I started to write my own recipes as such," Hansen said.

The food in What can I bring? is influenced by something Hansen has tasted or seen or something seasonal that's inspired her.

"Sometimes you might go out for dinner and there would be a flavour combo that you really love and you think 'oh what can I do with that' or you go home and try something out," she said.

"Or you have a play with what's in season. Right now we have a fig tree with lots of figs so I'm trying to think of different ways to use them. It's a real mixture of influence and inspiration, but it starts with the produce for me, how we can use this or how we can find ways to showcase what we've got on offer at the moment."

Every recipe featured in What can I bring? has been tested by Hansen three times, and all but the focaccia is photographed by her.

"For the book every recipe I've tried at least two or three times usually about three. But for the chorizo [recipe] for example, I would have made that five or six times before I was happy with the amount of liquid in there and the combinations and flavours, things like that," she said.

"Sometimes you just nail it straight away and you're like, that's perfect. I'm really happy with that and you'll cook it once and then cook it again, write it up, shoot it and then sometimes you know what you want it to be but it can take five or six times to get there.

"It's funny in this house it can be a bit, 'water water everywhere, but not a drop to drink' because I'm constantly cooking, but there's nothing for dinner. You know, I've been making this cake all day or whatever it might be, and then I'll forget that I actually need to go feed my family."

Favourite recipe: "I made a sponge cake from the spring section. It's a really beautiful cake and a nice one to make. Especially now, like a lot of people in the country, the chickens are going gangbusters and that cake uses a lot of eggs, that's probably a favourite. My kids just love a sponge cake."

WOW Factor: "There's actually a show stopper section, there's this meringue, hazelnut and chocolate mousse stack. It's not that hard, it just takes a bit of time, you have to make the layers in advanced, it's really yummy and it's quite impressive."

Easy and impressive: "There's a lot of really easy ones in there. There's a chorizo, potato, rice paella thing which is so easy. It can take any veggies you want to add in. You can make a big cheap pan of it and take it anywhere. It's easy and it's really hearty which I think is quite good and a cheap one to make as well. It's got a layer of caramelized onions on top, a layer of potato and this beautiful rice."