Primrose Cookies - an experiment with brush embroidery

 When you live in the Pacific Northwest and it has been gloomy and raining since September it's a nice little shot of happy when the primroses show up at the grocery store.  Even though it isn't spring yet, and it might not be spring here until June, primroses are a bright little promise that spring is on it's way.  Plus they only cost 98 cents; even more happy!

    I've been seeing a lot of the "brush embroidery" technique for cookie decorating making the rounds in the blogosphere and I thought it could be a good way to re-create the variegated colors of the primrose flowers. There is a good video tutorial by Amber Spiegel of SweetAmbs Cookies on youtube where you can see the brush embroidery technique in action.

    Start with your flower cookie iced and dried in it's base color.   Because we want the base icing color to show through start with just a little colored icing and work up if you need more. Pipe a thin line of icing and use a small craft brush dampened with a little water to pull the icing in thin lines toward the center of the flower.  For these darker pink flowers I let the first coat set a minute and then went around again to make the pink more substantial.

For these primroses with just a touch of pink I put teeny dots of pink icing in the center and then pulled the lines out.

For both the blue and yellow primroses I piped lines of icing at the centers and then pulled the lines out.

    These cookies were actually very easy to make and I think they turned out pretty well.  They are a nice sweet shot of happiness on an otherwise dreary day.