My husband and I are new to baking from scratch. Apparently we are fairly good at it but it takes a lot of trial and error or so we are learning lol. I'm making a chocolate cake from scratch and taste wise it's great but it doesn't rise like the boxed mix. Any tricks to getting the from scratch cake to rise more? We make red velvet from scratch and they have risen great except for one time. And my husband says it's bc I made the buttermilk instead of buying it. I'm not sure if I agree with that lol because I used buttermilk with the chocolate and they didn't rise.  Any suggestions?

From personal experience, my chocolate cake doesn't rise nearly as well as my other recipes, but it has amazing flavor so I won't change it.   What I do to compensate is add more batter to the pan in order to get more height.   

I did add quite a bit more batter to the pan and it rose fine my problem was more with the cupcakes. The ones that had slightly more batter didn't rise and had a flat top that went over onto the pan but the ones with less batter looked much better but were a bit too small for my liking. My personal preference is more cake to icing ratio.  Like I said we are new to this but we work hard to come up with perfected recipes. Thanks for your reply :)

I don't bake from scratch unless they want an eggless, dairy free chocolate cake and then I use that recipe called Crazy Cake or some call it Whacky Cake.  It's a great recipe that calls for vinegar in it (you've probably heard about it)  Anyway, I always use Pillsbury or Betty Crocker and Duncan Hines for the Red Velvet in which case I substitute milk with a little vinegar in it (homemade buttermilk) instead of water for the liquid.  The others, I follow the recipe except for the white cake, I use whole eggs instead of just the whites.  Have never had a complaint and always get told my cakes taste great.  So, I'll stick with I know is best (in my opinion)

Foe your cupcakes,  try this.... preheat oven to 400, bake cupcakes at 400 for 6 minutes then decrease temp to 350 until done.... all of my cupcakes now have beautiful domes.