Sweet 2016 Part 2: Raspberry Charlotte

Our dessert this month is the classic Raspberry Charlotte, with outer biscuits and inner raspberry mousse, jelly or pudding—depending on how you prefer your own recipe. This is an iconic dessert that always looks so impressive on the platter. I always think Charlottes are almost too pretty to eat, so creating one for Sweet 2016 was an easy choice - I don't think any dessert platter is complete without one! So here is my own.

Charlottes evoke so many pleasurable memories for me—I have always made mine in a berry flavor but you could also consider a peach, lemon or chocolate version to suit the colour scheme you have decided on. 

When making the biscuits, remember to keep any eye on your edges—the shapes and pieces have a habit of growing, so after constructing your pattern accurately, keep checking all your pieces against it to make sure your own dessert isn’t enlarging!

Each dome in this mystery is a different size, so approach each dome along with the dessert each month as a unique installment. You’ll also notice that this lower dome doesn’t have a decorative fringe. I have selected to have just three domes with lacy fringes in this mystery—and you can decide yourself whether you’d like none, some or all of them to be embellished in this way.

As in Part 1, I strongly recommend that you continue creating your motifs and setting them aside or pinning them against your chosen background—don’t sew anything down yet. 

As you can see, I'm still playing around with background options. I have been set on the idea of a light, possibly floral, background. But now I've seen Glenda's deep red and it really set my heart aflutter, it's gorgeous! Perhaps I will try out some moody dark backgrounds next - dark blue? velvet red? We'll see. The background it turning out to be a real mystery to me, there's always something and I do find it nearly impossible to select and then stick with colour schemes - there's just so many possibilities and I want to day dream over all of them! I've been lucky as there are so many colours and styles being made and shown over in my BOM Group over on Facebook that I've been able to consider many more variations than I originally would have done. Although I had a soft pastel idea in the beginning, I think that the style of my cakes will determine the background ultimately. The shades I choose and the stylistic tone will determine what I finally set my hear on. Until then, I'll keep playing around each month until something sticks. 

Tomorrow I'll show you just how I made my own Raspberry Charlotte, step by step. 

'Sweet 2016' is my current Mystery Applique BOM

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And don't forget to join my Sweet 2016 BOM Group over on Facebook too!