Calling all cupcake bakers!

I'm a self-taught baker who's dying to learn more (attending culinary school - or classes - is absolutely a goal of mine for 2016, and in the meantime, I'm investigating baking tips and tricks).

I'm looking for the math: measurements, weights, ratios, etc of baking cupcakes.  (I regularly watch Cupcake Wars, and am fascinated that they know how to measure out everything and incorporate the secret ingredients!).

I know of the 4-3-2-1: 4 eggs, 3 cups of flour, 2 cups of sugar, 1 cup of butter (plus one cup of milk and 1 tsp of baking soda), but I'm wondering if there are any other tips that you have. 

For example, when you throw in cocoa for a chocolate flavor, should your "3" in the 4-3-2-1 consist of 1.5 cups of cocoa and 1.5 cups of flour? Or if you're doing anything with cocoa, I've noticed that I should always use baking soda.   

Can't wait to see what you have to share! If it's a tip, a photo, a link - i'll take anything :)

The Cupcake Wars folks are just adding the secret ingredient to their existing recipes, e.g. switching out orange zest for lemon zest, adding matcha powder to a yellow cake.  Once you know how ingredients behave, you can switch things out more easily.  It isn't necessarily about remembering specific ratios.

yes i agree --

queencity -- when you can i suggest you purchase a professional baking culinary school book like one of these:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=professional+baking

so you see the different yearly editions and one of the older ones right now is under two bucks -- don't fret that you can't afford or would want to pay over a hundred dollars for the latest and greatest edition -- you will still learn a ton of basics in the older versions no sweat -- sounds like you would really like to eat up something like this -- go for it