Hi everyone! this is my first post and im im desperate need of your help!

I've been planning on starting up a cupcake buisness and at present im practicing recipes. I have two fav recipes for my chocolate cucake, two of which use oil instead of butter. (both runny batters). Moist and soft and lovely but they always overflow on one side halfway thru cooking. I've tried reducing the amount of batter i put in the cups and reducing the temp, and even rotating the pan but both recipes always overflow on the one side (like it has a tounge sticking out)!! They taste lovely, if only they looked as good!

My vanilla and other recipes (which are thicker i might add) come out perfect! I'd love it if my choc recipes worked as im spending ages trying out recipes which dont turn our half as nice and i really need to get going with this buisness. Here is one recipe:

Ingredients:

1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour

2 cups granulated sugar

3/4 cup Cocoa Powder

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

2 eggs

1 cup strong black coffee (can be hot)

1 cup buttermilk, room temperature

1/2 cup vegetable oil

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

I'd love your input as to why this might be happening!!!!

xxxxxx

I was trying to decide if I wanted to cook my cupcakes at a lower or higher temperature, so did an experiment. I made up one big batch of batter, and filled the tins with the same amount in each. I cooked one batch at a lower temp, and one at a higher temp.

The higher temp cuppies domed nicely, and were great. The lower temp cuppies started rising, but I guess weren't hard enough yet due to the low temp. So they kind of spilled over the edge.

So perhaps you could try cooking them at a higher temp, even if just for the first five minutes.

I would invest in an oven thermometer if you don't already have one.. It might be that your oven is cooking at a higher or lower temperature than it says.

Are you sure that your oven is level?

OOO, thanks for the reply guys. That's a good idea Zespri! Maybe i should be upping the temp instead of lowering it. My Mum always told me to lower my oven temps if i have a fan oven (which i do), maybe thats the prob with these reipes as they're so runny they need a hotter oven.
An oven thermometer sounds like a good idea too. I'm pretty sure the oven rack is level, but ill investigate that aswell.

Thanks for the reply girlies, u've been most helpful!

A fan oven? Is the fan blowing the batter to one side?

I agree with cheatize. It is the fan. Reposition yor shelves in the oven and hopefully that will solve it. If not, don't use convection on your cupcakes.

I agree with cheatize, too. I have a convection oven, and I have to use non-convection bake to do cupcakes, or they get blown over, particularly with thin batters. I accidentally had it set to convection last weekend when making some chocolate cupcakes, but luckily I noticed it before the cupcakes rose above the lip of the cups.

Change your buttermilk to heavy whipping cream - will make your cake super moist and will also thicken the batter.

I had a similar problem with my chocolate cake, started using heavy whipping cream and it's crazy good. Also much easier to work with since I wasn't dripping batter all over the place.

YAHOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

After all these months of trying to find 'THE' recipe, all i had to do was up the oven temp slightly and put them on a higher rack and tadaaaaaaa perfection. Can't believe i have spent ages fiddling and didn't even think to up the temperature.

I screamed for joy, scaring my 6 month old son in the process and called my husband immediately!!!

Thanks girls for everything

CASE CLOSED!

hehe.... glad to have helped!

FromScratch, do you sub heavy cream in all of your recipes?

Thanks, FomScratchSF.