Mini peonies are super-easy to create.  They use exactly the same technique as you'd use for the centre of a closed peony - you just stop after piping somewhere between six and nine petals (depending on your preference).

Use a bag fitted with a 123 nozzle and a fist sized amount of buttercream at most.

Pipe a small pump of buttercream onto a flat-iced cupcake, offset from the centre.

Starting with the nozzle at 90 degrees to the cake, with the wide end towards the centre, pipe from approximately 12 o'clock to 4'oclock.  Rotate the cupcake and start the next petal in the middle of the previous one.

Once your peony is large enough, stop piping.  You can fit two or three on a standard cupcake, depending on what else you want to add.

For the hyacinth, use a 10 or 12 nozzle and pressure pipe slowly to create the central stem.

Now use a 224 nozzle or a 16, 24 or 25 (see next lesson) to pipe small stars all over the stem.

Finish the cupcake with leaves, buds and berries.

Lesson Activity

Experiment with different nozzles for the hyacinth.  

The 224 will cover the stem quickly, other nozzles (such as a small star nozzle) will take a lot more effort.

You can also play around with different colours of hyacinths.

Create the classic blue hyacinth colour by mixing small amounts of blue and purple together.

Use a mix of big and small peonies in your bouquet designs, complementing them with hyacinths to give height.