Hi Everyone, I have asked this question before and jumped in on posts when others have asked and nothing is working.

My cupcakes are sinking major. I made like 72 cupcakes last night and was only able to salvage 12!!
I used DH with extenders, I removed the some ingrediants and decreased others. I baked longer I baked shorter, I raised the temp. I lowered the temp. I bought fresh eggs nothing seemed to help. The 12 I was able to salvage were not all from the same pan. What am I doing wrong? I make the same recipe for cake and the cakes turn out great.

One more question, when baking cakes and such should the rack be on teh bottom of the oven or up a couple?

Thanks for any help,
Kat

Sorry I won't be of a great help but I have never had that happen to me. I also use the DH with extender recipe and have no problems. I always bake my cakes in the middle of the oven, so move those racks up a few slots if you're baking on the bottom. This is how I do it - I use a cookie scoop to make sure there is an even amount of batter in each cupcake. I bake at 325 and start to check them for doneness at around 15 mins. I have never had one sink so that does seem strange.

Hopefully someone has another idea - but I definitely bake my cakes in the middle of the oven. If you're baking at the bottom of the oven the bottoms of your cupcakes are probably getting finished before the rest of the cupcake and maybe could be part of your sinking problem!

Good Luck
Brandie

I don't know what to do about your recipe, but you should bake as close to the middle of your oven as possible. I know that it isn't always possible, but don't bake on the closest rack setting to the bottom. Also.. in baking so many cupcakes.. are you over crowding your oven?

Does your oven bake unevenly? The only way of knowing for sure is to buy a few oven thermometers from the grocery store and put them in the oven in various places. Put the oven on the normal baking temp and check after you have given the oven about half an hour.

What about changing the recipe. It could just be that that combination of mix and extender just won't work well as cupcakes. Maybe try without extender, or a scratch recipe just to compare results.

Thanks everyone;

I did both, baked at the bottom and the middle. The first batch was over crowded but after that I baked then one pan at a time. I tried baking the pan going the width and the length, it didn't matter.

i will buy a couple oven thermometers but they are hard to read from the outside. I do have a meat thermometer I can dangle in the oven and read from the out side, may I'll try that also.

I will also try without the extenders and hopefully one of these things will work. I don't have a scratch recipe for vanlilla I can try so it'll have to be the box with a couple tsp of vanilla. Wish me luck, I need 48 for Thursday morning plus I have a cake to decorate for my daughter in laws B-day tomorrow.

This is a nice recipe for vanilla cupcakes. This particular recipe is for 12 so you would have to make it x4 for the 48 you need.

2 large eggs
2/3 sugar
1 stick softened butter
1 cup self raising flour
1 tsp real vanilla extract.

Cream butter and sugar until light and fluffy. Add eggs one at a time making sure the each egg has been incorporated before adding the next. Scrape down bowl. Finally add flour, mix until you cannot see streaks of flour. Make sure not to over-beat.

Fill liners half full. Bake on 350F for 18-20 minutes until the cupcakes have risen, are golden and spring back into shape when lightly pressed.

This recipe is super easy to do!

Thank you BakingGirl that looks so simple. I will definately use this tonight. I can get self rising flower and any gorcery store right? I haven't baked from scratch yet so this will be a first.

Thanks Again,
Kat

No problem Kat, I just hope they will work out OK for you. Yes, self raising flour is available in regular grocery stores.

you can make self rising flour out of AP flour too if you don't want to buy some.. just add 1 and 1/2 tsp of baking powder and 1/2 tsp of salt to each cup of flour you use.

I've been using DH mix with a box of pudding added plus a little extra water and one extra egg. It worked just fine for cakes but my cupcakes were sinking. Here's what I found out. The batter that sat in the bowl while the first batch was baking didn't sink as much when I got around to baking it. So, the next time I made cupcakes, after I filled the pan, I just let the whole thing sit for about 15-20 min. before I baked them. It helped, they still fell a little but not a huge sinkhole! Maybe give it a shot!

I had this same problem with cupcakes I did with DH pudding mix just a couple of weeks ago. I ended up adding like a quarter cup of water (maybe even a little more)to the mix and that did the trick. I did all of mine in the middle of the oven - first bunch sunk like a battleship - next batch added the water and tada poofy cupcakes. Hope that helps!!

If I'm using two pans I put the oven racks one above middle and one above that. Put one pan on the lower one to one side, next pan goes on the top one on the other side. Half way through baking, rotate the pans. I've also given up on paper liners. I use the foil ones now, leaving the paper liner inside even though it says to remove it, and they turn out great. You can also use the foil ones stacked alone on a cookie sheet with out a muffin pan and you can cook many cupcakes with out all of the pan rotating business.

I too use the cake mix extender and they seem to come out fine. I hope you get good results soon.

I have said this before, but I think you might be overbeating the mix, this happened to me before and I could't figure out what it was till my dh notice I left the mixer going for way more than 2 minutes. also try not to used the same batch for cake and caupcakes, cause what may work for one may not work for the other... wel, I hope you find the problem..good luck

Thanks so much everyone for your help, tips and suggestions!

jkalman, thanks, that will save me another trip to the store.

BakingGirl, I hope it works too, thanks again

eatsleepdreamcake, I also use an extra egg and had batter sitting and waiting too. I did notice that the ones that sunk were heavier than the ones that turned out. ???

GLEIGH75, I will try the water trick when I have a little extra time to mess around. I hope I get a tada and poofy cupcakes tonight!

SuHwa, another thing to try when I have axtra time. I will keep this in mind also.

lovescakes, yes I remeber you saying that, so I paid extra, extra attention to the mixing time. No luck, Totally sunk, thanks though, much appreciated

Question.. how long are you baking them for? Do they sink while in the oven or after you take them out? If they look good in the oven and then sink.. are you cooking them long enough? Just somethings I was thinking about..

I am baking them until they are firm. They are nice an puffy in the oven but when I take them out they deflate. I have to take a 1/2 day tomorrow to finish these up. I don't think the cupcakes can take all of the additions. I should have left well enough alone. I tried only one with no extenders and it turned out. Then I went and added some stuff and the same problem. White cake is very light so maybe adding isn't the right way to go when doing cupcakes. I'm just grasping for straws.

Kat

That could very well be the case.. good luck getting it all done!!

Well I brought home a thermocouple today to test my oven. Pretty interesting...I watched it start at 350 and then watched it drop down to 297 degrees Needless to say I can't bake cupcakes in my oven. I don't know if it just started or what. I just made a cake on Sunday, three of them actually. I also talked to one of my instructors and she said they weren't baking long enough. That was before I found out it wasn't working right. Well I had one batch turn out, they were small though and one pan sink. They're due tomorrow morning so now it looks like I will be running to the store again. This time I will for sure not use any extender, just the directions on the box. I think I'm on 150 cupcakes now.

Kat

If you have your oven manual there may be a way of calibrating your oven to bake at the correct temperature. Or call out a service person, it is probably not a big deal to fix it.

BTW, ovens cycle on and off so it is not unusual for the temperature to vary a bit, although over 50F degrees is too much. No wonder you have been having such a hard time with your cupcakes.

Hope you get your oven working correctly. It is my biggest fear my oven will give out on me, I use the thing about every day so it would be a bit of a disaster to be without oven.

I am glad you found the problem.. it sounded like they weren't baked long enough (eventhough the time was enough with the temp dip it wasn't)You should be able to bake them.. just make sure that a toothpick inserted dead center comes out completely clean. It might take an extra 10 minutes or so.. I'd test one out.. bake them until you get the clean toothpick. Do you have a neighbor or a friend that would let you use their oven fora few hours? That might be another option.. I'd let you use mine if you were closer.

No manual, the oven was here when I moved in. I am calling for service today for sure. Hope it's not too pricey.

Yes 50 degrees is a bit much. I had to go elsewhere and bake. I hope I get it working too, very soon. I have 3 cakes I need to make for next week. Glad I got this weeks done.

jkalman, I thought I could still bake them but no luck, wasted more. I can't tell you how many duds I had, probably close to 150-200. I've been trying to bake these darn things since Monday. Always testing too before I took them out. I thought it was somthing wrong with the recipe so I kept trying different variations. I just used the oven Sunday morning so I never thought it was my oven. Then when I used a friends oven I got one batch done that I took out of the oven after 4 min. and threw in the fridge until I could use someone elses oven they turned out real small. So anyway they had to throw something in the oven for dinner and moved the rack and didn't tell me. Ugh.. Two more trays in the garbage. Wished you lived closer too, I would have taken you up on it. LOL I finished them at 3:30 this morning. Needless to say I over slept and didn't meet the guy on time. Taking a vacation day so I can get some sleep. Glad this is over and done.

Kat

You defintiely deserve a vacation day after all of this. Good luck getting it serviced!!

Thanks, I thought so too. LOL


Kat