Recently I made some cupcakes that turned out mostly great. However, even other people than me – I have an aversion towards overly "sugary" desserts – said they were fairly sweet, and for me it seemed to obscure the other flavors.
(The other flavours being vanilla or rose in the batter. You could certainly smell them so I don't think it was just that they evaporated while baking, and I use a fairly heavy hand with those ingredients for baked goods.)
Is there any rule-of-thumb on what the "correct" ratio of sugar to other ingredients in a cake recipe is so I could tell if the recipe was using too much? (The recipe was: cream butter and sugar, add flour and baking powder, add eggs, add milk, stir until just combined, bake.) Or how far I could reduce sugar from the standard recipe without negatively affecting texture / moisture? And is it necessary to adjust any of the other ingredient amounts along with the sugar?