Hello,
I used kakeladi's recipe (found here). I used it for Tirimisu cupcakes. I used Betty Crocker French Vanilla box as the base. I like this cake recipe except for one thing: too sweet - even for my taste and I'm a sugar hound!

I know some things about cake science but not everything: Would the recipe be affected if I cut the sugar by a half cup (that is, use half cup instead of 1 cup)?

For my liquid I used 1 cup of strong coffee. I swear, all the sugar in the cake made it nearly impossible to taste the coffee flavor in the cake. Maybe the fact that I used a French Vanilla cake mix base has something to do with this lack of coffee flavor? I even dabbed coffee on the baked cakes afterward - still very little coffee flavor.

Other than that, I think overall it was a winner.
thanks
Julie

That recipe already has so much sugar and other stuff that yes you can cut the sugar by a half cup.

You are not the only person to have this issue with coffee. It turns out that you get the best coffee flavour if you generously sprinkle the layers with double brewed slightly sweet coffee after baking. Not just dabbing--you have to use about 2 ounces on a 9" layer.

You can also add LorAnn coffee flavour to the batter but it still doesn't come out as strong as you want.

I totally agree with Irene. Also, you can add a good dose of salt which cuts the sweetness a bit.

I use VERY strongly brewed coffee. Believe it or not, you will probably need to brush the cake several times. You might even be able to cut back on the liquid in the recipe so you have a less-moist cake to absorb the syrup.

You really need espresso. You might want to check this recipe out, especially the espresso extract and syrup parts: http://smittenkitchen.com/blog/2007/11/tiramisu-cake/