Orange and Crème Fraîche Cupcakes

I really enjoyed the Sicilian oranges from my lovely Italian friend.
Here are the cupcakes which have orange zest in the cake mixture. I only used the zest of orange but the lovely orange flavour was certainly there in the cake. I used crème fraîche instead of milk for the cake mixture to compliment the fresh flavour of orange. They are really moist and have a light texture.

I'm not a "pretty cupcake" maker really but I just felt like making something a little fancier than my usual products.  So I decorated them with my take on "buttercream icing". I used crème fraîche. The common ratio between icing sugar and butter is 2:1. You also need milk to loosen the consistency of the frosting.
I replaced 25% of butter with crème fraîche, which I think provides a good balance for piping the frosting. You can replace butter with margarine if you really want to go for the low-fat option like I did.
Well, they tasted pretty good. :)

Ingredients

• 6 oz low-fat spread  
• 6 oz caster Sugar
• 6 oz SR flour (or Plain flour + 1 tsp baking powder) 
• 1 egg  (When I used 2 eggs, the cupcakes sank as a result of too much liquid.)
• zest of 1 orange (or lemon)
• 100ml crème fraîche

For crème fraîche frosting

• 75g butter or margarine  
  
• 25g crème fraîche
• 200g icing sugar
• ¼ tsp vanilla paste
• zest of ½ orange  

 Method 

1. Pre-heat the oven 160-180 °c.
2. Put all ingredients in the food processer and mix well. (all-in-one method)     To make a dropping consistency, you may need to add more crème fraîche.
3. Bake in the oven for 25-30 minutes.
4. When the cupcakes are baked, let them stand for 5 minutes, then turn out to cool.
5. Decorate with lemon juice + icing sugar mixture or pour a drop of crème fraîche on top to make the cupcakes into a dessert. If you prefer, you can make crème fraîche frosting to decorate them.