Hi everyone,

I have a cake business from home and it has been running for 3 years. I just opened a new shop and I am in the "employee training" process right now. I have a commercial convection oven and I was training my helpers on how to make cupcakes.
The result was shameful! I used the exact same recipe, the exact same techniques and the exact same temp and time. But the cupcakes came out lopsided!
I know the reason can be one of three things:
1) oven, shelves, or pans not level (I dot think this is the problem here)
2) uneven oven temp (maybe what I am facing)
3) convection fan too strong (also maybe what I am facing)
The problem is the oven manual is in Chinese and the shop I bought it from is closed on the weekend (our weekends are Thursdays and Fridays).
What I am looking for now is a quick fix kinda thing. I will post pics of my oven and my cupcakes and let me know what I can do? I dont think I can lower the strength of the fan but I can lower the temp though.
What do you think??
I uploaded the pics in my gallery

Here's a thread where the same problem was happening to other people last year. I don't have time to read it, but maybe it will help.

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-679111-.html&sid=a1f8c17e9bced2661fcdd20209428cd2

Another one:

http://cakecentral.com/cake-decorating-ftopict-667332-.html&sid=ad212e3e5f7084f3b6e305ae4141be0e

thanks for the links.
It does seem like the reason is the fan
What can I do other than change the oven?

another thing. Isnt a convection oven supposed to distribute heat equally? then why are the cookies on the top rack browning more than the ones on the lower racks?

With the convection oven the fan blows the air around, unfortunately when the ccs are rising they are delicate and get blown too. I had an old oven but it had three settings for the fan, high, low and off. Can you turn it off? As far as the top browning more, where are the heat elements? Ours were on the sides.....

No i dont have settings and plus it is basicly a convection oven so there are no heating elements and i cant turn off the fan
this is making me loose sleep!!

I have the same problem

Got a smaller oven for cupcakes. That was the only thing that did it! I tried blocking the fan with another pan, I tried placing the cupcake pans in a larger pan with high sides, nothing worked! They all came out lopsided. My cookies are ok (not wow but just ok), my cakes are also not that wow. I dont know how people rave about covection ovens for baking!!! weird!

We own a bakery and just purchased a new Vulcan commercial oven.  We experienced the same issue with lopsided cupcakes.  We tried putting a sheet pan in the center rack, but that didn't solve the problem.  I think the problem is that when you open the oven, the temperature drops.  Then when you put your cupcakes in and close the door, the fan blows really hard to get the temperature back up.  So, I put about two inches of water in a sheet pan and put the sheet pan in the middle rack.  I preheated the oven to 350.  I put the cupcakes in, and before closing the oven doors, I turned the oven down to 300.  I baked them for 15 minutes at 300.  They turned out perfectly.  I hope this helps!

I had the same problem - what fixed it for me is turning the heat WAY down.  I bake all my thick cake batters at 300 and any thin oil-based batters at 285.

I rotate my pans half way thru the baking time! Always works for me!