Orange sunshine and lemonade..

Hellooo! Happy Friday!!

I’m very excited to be able to share my Studio Cake Saturdays cake today!

I am a big, big fan of baking : ) For Christmas I got lots of baking themed gifts including a beautiful red shiny mixer *swoon* and a lovely baking book called A Year of Cake by The Clandestine Cake Club.  I chose to bake an Orange Sunshine Cake cake out of this book for my Studio Cake Saturdays.

My bake was the last day of spring term and in my book it said that this cake celebrated the beginning of the school holidays so I thought it was a perfect fit. Also the cake is covered in sweets. Win.

The recipe suggests this be a gluten free cake but I didn’t want to do that so I just substituted with regular flour. I’ve made a few gluten free cakes but I always find they end up gritty. Maybe I’m not sing the right flour – any flour suggestions would be welcomed!

Recipe:

170g unsalted butter
170g sugar
3 eggs
170g plain flour
Grated zest of 2 oranges
2 tbsp milk
1 tsp baking powder
Red, orange and yellow sweets to decorate

Butter cream:

45g butter
140g icing sugar
2-3 tbsp orange juice

 

My baking tips are:

* Always sieve your flour – I do it 3 times!

* Add eggs REALLY slowly

* Always use salted butter.

The recipe suggests you use Jelly Tots to decorate – which looks completely beautiful in the book.. But Jelly Tots are so hard to find!! Tooting had none. So because it was nearly Easter I decorated with Jelly Baby Bunnies – which tasted lovely but looked nothing like bunnies!! The book also suggested you serve the cake with ice cold home made lemonade. The dream. So I took a bottle of cloudy lemonade in and we drank that with our cake.

Thanks for reading!

xx

Nothing says celebration quite like a Ferrero Rocher!

Happy Friday!!

Welcome to another Studio Cake Saturdays post!

Today is Tamla’s turn, who wowed us all with homemade salted hazelnut brittle. Yowzers! Over to you Tamla…

I choose this recipe, as nothing says celebration quite like a Ferrero Rocher!

The cupcakes:
So, I used an 8:8:8:4 cake recipe as the base of my cupcakes (8ozs flour, sugar and butter, 4 eggs) then added 1 teaspoon of vanilla essence, I teaspoon of baking powder and 2 tablespoons of cocoa powder. I creamed the butter and sugar, then added the vanilla essence and eggs, all using an electric whisk. Then I folded the dry ingredients in using a spoon. I made sure I used gold cupcake cases (very important!) and filled them about a third full, then baked them for about 20 minutes at 170 (I think) in a preheated oven.

The icing:
I don’t really have measurements for this, as I kinda made it up as I went along. All measurements are guesses!
I creamed 200g butter, 1 teaspoon vanilla essence and 2 tablespoons double cream together. Then I added icing powder, a bit at a time, until it felt like the right consistency. It was a lot of icing sugar. I also added Nutella (about 2 tablespoons), next time I would add more Nutella and less icing sugar!

The salted hazelnut brittle:
I used this recipe, but added way more nuts than they suggest, as I like my brittle dense! It took longer than the recipe says for the sugar to turn brown, you just need to watch it, so it doesn’t burn.

I like to bake, but haven’t really had the time recently, and wanted to make up my own recipe(ish) as normal I follow recipes from books. Next time I’d bake the cakes closer to the day (I had to make them in advance), and I’d add more Nutella to the frosting!

Thanks Tamla! Your cupcakes were magnificent!

xxx

Celebrating Sparks!!!

Studio Cake Saturdays is back!!

Hooray!

Studio Cake Saturdays is a project I started a couple of years ago where all of the people I work with on a Saturday take turns to bring in cake. There is nothing better than finishing a workshop and eating delicious cake. Yum.

This term we have a very exciting theme – ‘Celebration!’ Because Studio Film School has rebranded to Sparks! And what better way to celebrate than with CAKE!!

So first up we have one of the Sparks company directors – Dan..

“I picked a recipe that I’d done before. It’s from the Hummingbird bakery who tend to advocate using a food processor to beat everything together – which is always a win in my book”

“I chose this bake because:

– I once made these as part of a wedding present

– they are red and white – the colours of a show my partner has been working on that opened that week

– I once attended an American Halloween party dressed as Strawberry Shortcake”

“I’d made the cakes before so I didn’t have too much trouble – but the mixture didn’t seem to make very many cakes – I was surprised by how little battle batter there was – so maybe I didn’t mix it well enough?”

“Also, the cream cheese icing didn’t keep very well in a tin over the tube – it was very runny. So maybe I should have put more sugar in”

The recipe Dan used can be found here.

Thanks very much Dan! Your cakes were LOVELY!!

xx

I Love Lists! Girl Power!

Today is International Women’s Day!

In honour of this I wanted to share some of my very favourite films that are directed and/or written by women.

In the world of filmmaking women are massively under represented. In the past 10 years only ONE female has been nominated for an Oscar – Kathryn Bigelow for The Hurt Locker in 2010. That is it! One!

A recent study from the ‘Center for the Study of Women in Television and Film’ looked into the top 250 films of 2015 and found that only 9% of directors and 11% of writers were female.

These statistics are really appalling. There needs to be more women working in the film industry.

Below is a list of 10 wonderful female filmmakers. I find these women and their work continually inspiring, if you haven’t watched these films I urge you to do so! Support women in film!

Ok.. Lets go..

Susanne Bier

One of my all time favourite directors. Her films include ‘After the Wedding’, ‘Brothers’ and very recently on TV ‘The Night Manager’.

 

Jennifer Kent 

Director of The Babadook which is genuinely the scariest film I’ve seen in a very long time. I actually hid under a cover while watching it!

 

Mary Harron

Director of ‘American Psycho’ – a seriously brilliant film. What else can I say – it’s a classic!

 

Miranda July

I love Miranda July, she is a writer, performer and filmmaker – so a real inspiration to me! She wrote, directed and starred in ‘Me and You and Everyone We Know’ and it is a awesome film!

 

Ana Lily Amirpour

Ana Lily Amirpour describes her directorial debut ‘A Girl Walks Home Alone at Night’ as an “Iranian Vampire Spaghetti Western” Brilliant! It’s a beautifully shot film and it’s black and white which I completely love!

 

Lena Dunham

I adore her early work – her short films and her feature ‘Tiny Furniture’ which she wrote, directed and starred in alongside her mother and sister who played.. her mother and her sister. Also for composition geeks Lena Dunham does the ‘rule of thirds’ beautifully!

 

The Soska Sisters

They are a real inspiration to any female who wants to get into making horror films. As life long fans of the horror genre they started their career as actors but were disheartened by the type of roles they were offered as twins (I can only imagine..) So started making their own films. ‘American Mary’ is fantastic.

 

Amy Sherman-Palladino

Creator and writer of ‘Gilmore Girls’. I love Gilmore Girls and I have watched the whole series over and over and over. It is hilarious and really cleverly shot – the show LOVES a long take!

 

Jennifer leigh 

I saw ‘Chained’ at Fright Fest 2012 and was blown away. It was my film of the festival. I wrote about it here. Watch it, it is awesome.

 

Tamra Davis

‘Crossroads’ is a great, great film. I must have watched it 20 times the year it came out! What can I say I love Britney!!

So that’s my list! Thanks for reading : )

Go watch these films if you haven’t already!

Sheena x

The Ditch – World Premiere!!!

 

Amazing news!! My short film The Ditch has got its world premiere screening! On 14th January at The Hackney Picturehouse as part of the wonderful London Short Film Festival!!

The Ditch will be screened at an event called ‘Tales of the Unexpected’ alongside other short films which I am very excited to watch!

Full details of the screening are here.

What a brilliant start to 2016 this is going to be!!

x

The Ditch is finished!!

Stephen (Producer), Sheena (Director), Lucy (Nina), Henry (Producer)

Yes! You read correctly! My short film The Ditch is finally finished! Look at those smiles! We are all so happy with that news!

Stephen and Henry arranged a lovely cast and crew screening for us at Odeon Covent Garden and it was incredible to watch the film on the big screen! Actually it was a bit emotional…

Stephen said a few words about the long and bumpy road we have been on while making The Ditch. Can you believe that in the end it took us 3 years to make?!

It was a long, long journey for all involved and the film has not ended up as we thought it would in the beginning, but as I said to Stephen the other day; I would not change a thing about the film! We have all put our heart and soul into it and I am so, so proud of everyone and of the finished product.

Photo by Lee Guilliland

We are now submitting The Ditch to film festivals worldwide… It’s a nerve-racking time!! Please keep your fingers crossed for us!

Sheena x

Photo by Lee Guilliland

Photographs, Jelly Teddies and Strangers…

My great friend Dan Ramsden has been directing a play this summer and it is being performed in Putney this week! Details here.

A couple of weeks ago Dan asked me to go along to one of his rehearsals and take some photos. I LOVE taking photos of rehersals!! I’d say it’s one of my favourite things to take photos of! I just love all the behind the scenes stuff and the making of.. Awesome.

I take a lot of behind the scenes photos as part of Drunken Chorus. Some of my favourite examples are here and here. Anyway, I just wanted to share a couple of the photos I took that night, so please enjoy! : )

Mucho love xxx

 

 

The Ditch… (take 2)

Next weekend I am making a film! It is the postponed and rescheduled shoot of my short horror film The Ditch.

We shot the first half of the film in a forest in Dorking in September 2012. Directing a horror film was literally a dream come true for me and I wrote about it here.

After our first lot of shooting we ran a crowdfunding campaign and thanks to lots of truly amazing people we reached our goal!

So we were all set for our second half of shooting which was scheduled for September 2013 – the film is set in a forest so we had to shoot at the same time each year so that the leaves looked the same… Unfortunately in the week before the shoot we had to cancel because of really bad weather… I wrote about how completely gutted I was about that here.

However! I am a firm believer that sometimes things really do happen for a reason. And our shoot getting cancelled in September gave me a lot of time to really think about the story, where it was going and what it was saying…

I had two choices :

1. Wait until the following September and shoot the rest of the film – but plan a contingency shoot weekend incase the weather was terrible again.

2. Rewrite the script and set it in a location not weather dependent.

I chose 2. I felt really frustrated that an entire year had gone by and we still hadn’t finished the film. I did not want to find myself in that position again and I really didn’t want to have to wait another year..

We shot a lot of the really key moments of The Ditch in the first shoot, so I could really see how this footage could be worked into a new script as kind of ‘flashback’ sequences. For me The Ditch is about guilt, consequences and what if’s.. I discovered that the feelings and themes I wanted to evoke in an audience could happen within a story set in a forest or could happen equally well in a story set in a hotel room..

So thats what I did. I set the film in a hotel room. And I am insanely proud of the script and excited to direct it and see it coming to life in front of my eyes next weekend!

 

 

I Love Lists! (5 awesome screenwriting blog posts)

Recently I have been doing a lot of writing – finishing off drafts of my short horror film The Ditch (shooting in a couple of weeks!!) And also working on a new project- an art aouse/thriller feature..

As part of my writing process I will often do a lot of reading too – I love reading the blogs of other writers to get tips and insight!

So I thought I would share 5 awesome screenwriting blog posts that have inspired me this week!

* 10 writing tips from Joss Whedon

* 25 screenwriting tips from David Bowie! Totally awesome!

* Scripts are all about emotions not words…

* How to write a killer script from the fabulous Jane Goldman

* And finally, I refer to this post over and over again, I love James Moran!

Happy reading! : )

x

Pedro loves Summer!

It wasn’t easy to decide what cake to bake for Studio Cake Saturdays on my week.. I did feel the pressure to come up with something great since I had chosen the theme! But I wanted something a bit obscure as well (naturally).

And then it came to me! The cake Pedro makes for Summer in ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ – Awesome!!

I love ‘Napoleon Dynamite’ it is just so funny! My absolute favourite bit is when Napoleon does a skit instead of Pedro – me and my friend once learned that entire dance intending to request the Jamiroquoi song while out that night and wow people in the club. Ha ha.

The base of the cake was a plain vanilla sponge, I used a recipe from my Grandma Joyce, it’s the one I always follow when making this kind of cake. I made a chocolate version of this cake for the last Studio Cake Saturdays.

Ingredients:

8 oz self raising flour

8 oz caster sugar

1/2 teaspoon salt

4 oz margarine

2 eggs beaten with 5 tablespoons of evaporated milk and 5 tablespoons of water

Few drops of vanilla essence.

Sieve flour, sugar, salt and cocoa. Rub in margarine. Stir in eggs, essence and liquid  beat well and bake at 180 C.

My baking tricks for this cake are:

* Sieve the flour 3 times!

* Add the liquid VERY slowly! Add a bit then stir, add a bit then stir etc

* Replace the evaporated milk with regular milk – simply because I didn’t have any! Regular milk works fine.

 

 photo by Dan Farrell

For the filling I used a trick of my mums – slice the cake into 3 and then spread jam on one layer and butter cream on the other – this makes the cake incredibly moist and extra delicious! Thanks Linda!

I was SO proud of the way this cake was looking, I’d done that piped icing thing around the edge of the cake and it looked ace! But then I had to write on it in red and it all went wrong!!

I made my red icing rather than buy it and I just didn’t make it thick enough, so when it got on the cake it ran.. ‘Pedro’ looks OK but ‘Summer’ was a big fail! And I was SO disappointed!! (And a little bit grumpy)

photo by Dan Farrell

However, I realised that I have to allow myself a bit more time for the next cake I decorate, and make the writing icing very thick, so if I was to do it again I would definitely end up with a better design – so it’s been a big learning process, which is totally fine. And there were no actual tears ; )

I was very happy with how it tasted anyway so that’s the main thing!

Much love x