Sometimes you gotta just start again.

I'm on plated desserts this week, which means I have to prepare a competency plate for Friday. Time to start planning something creative and challenging and wonderful.

In the meantime, the seven of us who showed up this morning practiced making 1-spoon quenelles with whipped cream (like the ones on these chocolate custards). Dessert quenelles are usually made with one spoon, while savory ones (usually made from forcemeat or savory mousse) are made with two spoons. With 2-spoon quenelles, you're aiming for three distinct sides, and they're often poached before serving, but for dessert, the goal is pointed and shiny. Use two metal spoons, alternating them in a glass of hot water. If the spoon is too hot, the quenelle slides right before you get it shaped. And if it's too cool, the quenelle won't come off at all. We practiced until we could make ten acceptable ones.

I began my plated desserts to be served tomorrow through Thursday: triple chocolate mousse cake. First I made two sheet pans of chocolate chiffon cake. Then I made a big batch of creme anglaise (using 32 egg yolks) by scalding half and half, tempering the egg yolks (which had been beaten with sugar), then cooking it until nappé (until the custard coats the back of a spoon.) I added softened sheets of gelatin, then poured the warm custard over three bowls of chopped chocolate: white, milk, and bittersweet. Then I folded in a pint and a half of whipped cream.

When it came time to fill the molds, I realized that my white chocolate mixture was "broken": somewhere along the line, something happened and the mixture was grainy. The other two batches were perfectly smooth, so I think the problem may have been with the chocolate I used. We often save leftover chocolate and what I used was just that -- chunks of white chocolate that had been melted and rehardened. Chef tried a couple of "fix" methods: adding some fresh cold cream, and adding some fresh warm cream, but neither attempts produced anything acceptable. So I filled the molds with a layer of dark chocolate mixture, then set about remaking the white custard, with fresh chocolate this time. The broken stuff went right down the sink.

That's a hard/good lesson to learn. I grew up in a household where my mother ate burnt toast so often that she grew to prefer it. But our goal is to serve excellent food, and if it's not working, bite the bullet, start over, do it right.