My niece asked for vanilla cake with dulce de leche filling for her birthday. I think that the All occasion Downy Yellow Butter Cake will be too sweet paired with the dulce de leche and I wouldn’t just reduce the amount of sugar in the recipe. Any suggestions? Thanks!

I made the White Velvet Cake with 2/3 the sugar.  I forget exactly the amount, but it was 2/3 of whatever it called for.  Then, whatever amount of sugar you remove, add 1/2 that amount of liquid (I used milk, but thinking about it, water probably makes more sense).  So, if you remove 1 c. sugar, add 1/2 c. extra liquid.  I think it took a little longer to bake, but I don’t quite remember.  It came out wonderfullly, though.

That’s very interesting… I’m going to try it and I’ll let you know how it comes out!
Thanks!!!!

Thanks for the info Anne. Do you usually reduce sugar like that for cakes? I only reduce by 10-15% usually, because I was afraid it’ll compromise the structure and texture.

I used to do it all the time, as that was very important to me then, and I did it this one time on this “early” Rose cake.  Since then, though, I don’t really change the sweetness of her cakes, because they’re not as sweet as other recipes.  The cake is a tad denser, but still very moist and very, very soft and delicious.  Truthfully, I don’t think you’d even know it was modified unless you were doing a side-by-side or really “knew” a particular cake.  The milk worked great—I used it because it was the cake’s “liquid,” but my comment about using water was motivated by thinking that the liquid in sugar is water, not milk.  But there was no ill effect using milk.

Daniela, I’d be interested to hear how it came out. 

Another idea is to make a genoise or biscuit, and to customize the quantity of sugar.  You can reduce some of the sugar in the recipe, but don’t reduce too much what is added to whites.  Then you can customize the sugar in the syrup.  For instance, if you are trying to make a cake with only 22% sugar by weight, reduce the recipes to 22% and also the syrup to 22%.  Voila.