Replacing butter and sugar in cakes.

I am trying to bake more so im not eating crap from the shops but want to reduce the amount of butter and sugar in my recipes to make it a bit healthier. i have just found this yummy cupcake recipe that DD and i are enjoying making...and eating...so far have made banana and sultana, and passionfruit. it has 125g butter and 1/2cup sugar. i used 90g butter the second time i made them and they were still quite fluffy, and i think il use brown sugar instead of caster sugar next time.

ive tried using apple sauce ages ago and i thought it made things chewier. what else can i use, do you just cut the amount of butter down....how low can i go? and the sugar, i thought i could use honey or maybe half and half? i use 1 duck egg instead of two chicken eggs.

any ideas??

Maybe with the sugar you can use the Equal sugar or something simular. Far less calories.

Not much help with butter.. but maybe you could use some extra virgin olive oil.

I use Nuttelex. It's dairy free and much better for you (apparently) than other "margarines/butters". Based on vegetable oils. I actually find for my cookies... it's much much better than butter.

Have you tried Stevia instead of sugar? Or "smart sugar" which is a blend of Stevia and sugar?

Brown sugar is really only a taste/texture substitute. The calories are about the same. According to Calorie King 100g of white sugar has 383 calories compared to 400 calories for brown.

There are alot of carrot cakes that have oil instead of butter, so perhaps you could try that.