Lights, Camera, Bake! 2024: Delights for Home Bakers

Emma Burton is the creative force behind Lights, Camera, Bake!, where she develops recipes, styles food, and produces accompanying photos and videos for home bakers. Hailing from a small town in New Zealand, Emma's passion for storytelling and baking has driven her blogging journey. Her approach to baking is simple and rustic, focusing on soul-satisfying and comforting recipes. Despite facing open heart surgery, Emma's dedication to baking remained steadfast, becoming a source of connection and joy. Her recipes, ranging from Plum Shortcake to Oreo Cheesecake Cookie Dough Bars, are designed to be comforting treats shared with loved ones. With years of self-taught expertise, Emma ensures that every recipe on Lights, Camera, Bake! is reliable and accessible, catering to bakers of all skill levels. DeliveryRank finds out more.

Emma, can you share the story behind the creation of "Lights, Camera, Bake!" and what inspired you to combine your passions for baking and filmmaking?

I started Lights, Camera, Bake! When I was 18 and straight out of high school. This was in 2012 when food bloggers were scarce and the ones that were around were getting bigger and more popular. I had always loved baking as a child and I was always experimenting with ingredients in the kitchen so seeing other people actually share their own recipes with the world inspired me to try the same. 

During highschool I started making short films with my friends and really wanted to get into the film industry so combining that passion for baking and experimenting with ingredients and then filming these experiments and sharing them on YouTube seemed like a great way to combine those passions. This also gave me an outlet to practice with video editing, etc.

How do you go about developing and testing your recipes to ensure they are both unique and accessible for bakers of all skill levels?

I will often look at food trends and flavours that are popular and then begin brainstorming recipe ideas from this. From there I will get in the kitchen and test different recipes and combinations of ingredients until a recipe starts to form. Sometimes this takes only a couple of tries and other times it takes months! I will often look at my popular recipes and see if there are different ways to spin them with different additions or flavours. I have always enjoyed simple, home baked goods with minimal fuss so making accessible recipes for any skill level is a no brainer for me.

How do you balance the artistic elements of food styling and photography with the practical aspects of baking and recipe development?

This is a really tough one for me! Being a one woman show, testing and making the recipe as well as setting up lighting, camera equipment and then taking the time to style the finished product is really hard and very time consuming! I also have congenital heart disease so balance my passion with work and these health issues really takes a toll. I certainly made A LOT of mistakes along the way and have only recently started to come into my own ‘style’ that I am happy with. I test recipes until they work for me every single time and once I am happy with the final recipe, I will shoot the videos and the images of the recipe process and the finished product. Then comes editing, writing the blog post and all the scheduling and engaging with social media. It's a lot of work, but a lot of fun!

What strategies do you use to engage with your audience and build a community around your blog? How do you decide which recipes to feature based on audience feedback?

This is a great question as I am beginning to strategise new ways to connect with my audience to build a greater connection. Right now I connect through my social media channels, replying to comments, emails and the comment section on my blog. I love hearing from my audience and connecting with a community of like minded people so I am really putting in more effort to foster a larger dialogue with my audience.

I usually use my analytics data to decide on which recipes to feature. Whatever is popular based on the data (and any comments around new recipes) tells me what people are loving and wanting to see more of at any given moment.

How has your background in filmmaking influenced your approach to creating baking tutorials and videos? Can you share any memorable experiences or challenges from combining these two fields?

Again, being a one woman show for over 10 years made combining those two passions really difficult. I could never get the camera angles I wanted or the final video product that I was proud of. This along with all the elements of running a food blog would really burn me out so I do feel like, for a period of time, my passion and creativity dwindled. I had a constant feeling that I had to put out three new recipes a week and a new food video every week to gain a larger audience and to provide my current audience with new content. However, recently I have discovered that by improving the quality of the content and the recipes, my audience still reacts just as well. Allowing myself time to really develop recipes and video content I can be proud of has brought back my passion for both baking and filmmaking. 

My now partner now also helps me with the filming process so I can experiment a bit more with different ways of capturing the content and use better camera angles to make the videos more interesting than I could before which has been a massive help and a reinvigoration for Lights, Camera, Bake!.

If you would like to find out more about Lights, Camera, Bake!, please visit https://www.lightscamera-bake.com/