My favorite chocolate cake recipe is the one on the Hershey's cocoa tin - I think it's called Hershey's Perfectly Chocolate cake. I made this into cupcakes this week, and they seemed to fall apart easily. I always substitute sour cream for the milk in the recipe.

Is this not a good recipe for cupcakes, or did I screw it up somehow? The flavor was wonderful, of course, as this recipe is wonderful tasting. It was just so soft, when the cupcake paper liner was pulled away, the cake seemed to fall apart.

I'm hoping I can use this for cupcakes, as I love this recipe....

It works perfectly for me. The texture is great and it comes out of the liner intact. It domes when I want and stays flat when I want. Keep trying. Check you oven temp calibration. Also use 1tsp each on the leaveners. I use the sc sub also. I also add some espresso powder to the water.

Glorious Treats uses it for cupcakes. Check out her post to see if she's made some changes. It's very good. I use this recipe and another one.

http://glorioustreats.blogspot.com/2010/04/recipe-perfectly-chocolate-cupcakes.html

Well, I thought these were good for cupcakes; thanks for all your input. Guess I'll have to try again.

It also works great for me. I also sub sour cream for the milk and add espresso powder to the boiling water. I will say, when I used milk instead of sour cream, they tended not to hold together as well....but you use sour cream, so I don't know why they fall apart. It's a good recipe so I would try it again.

While it tastes good with the milk, the cake (not cupcakes) always sank in the middle. It has a better crumb with the sour cream, AND it doesn't sink. I don't know why these cupcakes were so soft....

I still think it is your oven temp. I use the cheap $5.00 thermometers from Walmart. Periodically, I put them all in the same oven to make sure THEY are calibrated. I never bake without them.

Geez, I am a box mix baker, and have been afraid of trying to bake from scratch. You guys have gave me the courage to try again. I hope I don't get too frustrated because when I tried it before, I could never get consistant size cupcakes, and a lot of times, they didn't turn out. Here's Hoping

I use this recipe all the time for cup cakes, it's simply delicious. I use soy vanilla milk instead as a substitute & it is moist as can be.
Try again, sometimes it's just a matter of working it out to your oven.

I abuse this recipe with all kinds of baked-in fillings too.

For filling, I use a dispenser because this is a thin batter. I fill this one 2/3 full because it really rises. Just practice filling evenly. If you over-fill some, spoon a little out. This is something you just have to feel by experience. On thicker batters, I have a collection of scoops, or dashers. Because all of my recipes are so different, I write the size of the scoop on the recipe for future reference.

I have my oven temp at about 375 convect and immediately turn it to 325 convect. I bring the temp up before each new batch. The toothpick method, touch, and smell method all work on this recipe to test doneness. Don't overcook. To learn a new recipe, just bake one or two cc's and take notes, take them out, break them open after a little cooling and see how they look and taste. When you are confident you have the right time and temp, bake the batch. Every oven is different.

amaryllis, check out Warren Brown's site and his book. I am convinced his recipes are fail-proof. It is a book geared to learning scratch baking.