A Masterclass with P&O Food Hero, Eric Lanlard

Things were about to get fluffy in the kitchen on the first full day of my P & O Food Heroes cruise to the Norwegian Fjords as this morning I was heading to the Cookery Club for a masterclass with Eric Lanlard! 

First, though, it was time for a quick trip around the ship. Taking a tour of the decks is one of the must-do items on the list of ‘things to do on the first day of a Cruise’ so that you can familiarise yourself with where everything is but I simply ran out of time yesterday. 

Leaving the tour until the morning is actually preferable as you have the ship pretty much to yourself, very useful if you want t take lots of pictures. 

As Norway is an hour ahead of British Summer Time, the ship’s clocks went forward at 2am in the morning. Ok, I thought, I’ll change the clock on my phone so that I don’t miss the masterclass. Ha ha ha.

Needless to say, it didn’t work, I woke up at 8am, thinking it was 7am and very nearly missed the start of the class….just kidding I was still there 15 minutes early. 

The cookery club, on deck 17 is right at the top of the ship and is ironically right next door to the gym. It has room for 24 people around 12 stations; that means 2 people to a bench.  

In the masterclass we were making lemon meringue cupcakes -oooh

apple shuffle -ooooh

and finally, white chocolate and passion fruit cake pops. 

We gathered around the front bench as Eric Lanlard demoed how to make the cupcake sponge and lemon curd. (We didn’t actually make the curd ourselves which I was a bit disappointed about but I guess the class would have gone one for a lot longer than three hours if we had.) 

On our workstations, all of the ingredients were weighed out ready for us to use and Eric Lanlard recommended that you always have your ingredients prepared like this before you start baking for precision and in the interest of being organised.  

There are two main ways of making cake pops, the method I use is spherical cake tins into which I then insert lollipop sticks once the cake is cooked and cooled. 

Alternatively, you can crumb a ready-made sponge cake into buttercream which you then roll into balls before freezing. 

Meanwhile, melt white chocolate over a Bain Marie (or microwave) and dip in the end of a lollipop stick into the chocolate until coated before inserting into the middle before returning the cake pop to the fridge/freezer. 

Once set, dip the cake pop into the chocolate and liberally coat before decorating with sprinkles or whatever else you want. Unfortunately, the kitchen may have been a bit too warm for our cake pops and which made dipping them problematic. I then went on to spill water on them and the chocolate didn’t quite set. 

Finally, the last dish that we did in the masterclass was an apple souffle. Readers of this blog will know that I learnt how to make a souffle du fromage at Le Gargantua last year so I was keen to try a sweet souffle, the problem was that calvados and I do not get along. Although the souffle mix looked alright before going into the oven, it didn’t cook properly so I’m just going to have to try the recipe again at home….sans the calvados. 

There's meringue in the bowl, just checking that those peakes are stiff enough.

After eating all those cake I joined my mother and father for a salsa class before heading over to the Live Lounge for ‘an audience with Eric Lanlard, where the world famous patissier shared stories about his incredible career. From working with Albert and Michel Roux to baking a cake for the Queen Mother.