Hi all! I have been using the chocolate cake recipe on the back of the Hershey can for awhile now. I think it tastes excellent and I love the texture.

Lately though I have been having some problems with it when using it for cupcakes. The tops get very stiff (they almost look like shiny plastic) but then the bottoms are still runny. When you peel the liner off, the bottoms stick and look liquidy in the middle. I have tried baking higher than the recommended 350 and I've tried lower. I seem to be getting the same results no matter what. I even rotate my pans half-way through in case there are hotspots in my oven. As I said, for cakes this recipe is wonderful, but the cuppies suck!!!

Any suggestions? Switch recipes? I'm considering switching to a WASC type/doctored mix chocolate cake, but I really want to stick with as many scratch recipes as possible. If you don't have suggestions for what to do with the Hershey recipe, got any good recipes to suggest? I've been purusing the recipe section and there are just sooooo many!

Thank you all for your help. Off to the grocery for a bit to get my cupcake liners!

Nobody has any suggestions? Please?

My favorite scratch recipe for Chocolate cake is the Double Chocolate Layer Cake from Epicurious.
You will love it - everyone else does
http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/double-chocolate-layer-cake-101275[/url]

The Scott Clark Woolley Fudge Brownie Cake is amazing - I like it even better than the Epicurious cake. It works great for cupcakes - although they do not dome (if that matters to you).

Check this link http://www.bak*ing911.com/cakes/problems.htm but take out the asterisk before pasting the (modified) URL into your browser to see if any of their troubleshooting tips sounds about right for your cupcake experience. I used to bake the Hershey's cake all of the time before switching to the SCW cake...but I am not so sure I ever tried cupcakes.

Thank you guys! I'm going to have to try out those recipes. I thought I pretty much had all of my recipes down pat, but now this chocolate cuppie problem crops up. Ugh! I think I'm going to have a cupcake sampling party - let everyone rate the different recipes.

I have never seen baking911 before - what information they have! I think I could browse through there all day. Thanks for the link!