Hi everyone! I am having trouble baking more than one pan of cupcakes at once. I find that the top ones turn out ok but the ones on the next level down end up super flat & spread out and end up joining to each other. What am I doing wrong? I would love to bake THREE or FOUR levels at once!! :) I always bake from scratch and I fill the cases 3/4 full. I cook at 160deg celcius on bake. I have a fan forced option (not the same as fan bake), perhaps that would be a better option to get the warm air circulating around more? Any advice welcome! :)

 I have always been told that only in a fan forced / convection oven can you bake multiple pans since the heat is circulated and not coming from the the top or the bottom. Also with a fan oven you need to pull down the heat a bit. 

I have a old fashion  top heat oven, which means one pan/ tray at the time.

Same here. I fit 2 tray with 20 cupcakes in total at the same time. Having 12 on 2nd from top on a rack on one side and 8 (2 lines) underneath on the other side (3rd row is covered). Bit hard to explain, but hope that helps.

It only makes sense when making more than 12 but less then 21 or more than 36.

Another option is to buy single silicon cupcake holders in addition to your 12 cupcake tray. That way you can bake them all on the same level. But they are quite expensive :/

Edit: More than *24*

Because of the placement of the fan in my oven, I do not use it when baking cupcakes because they will actually be "pushed" to one side as they rise... 

I bake two pans all the time in the same oven without the convection turned on... They come out fine... though, I don't like them to dome so the flatness of any other pan was never an issue...

That sounds to me weird, I have used fan ovens alot and never had that happen to me, maybe the fan is too strong.

I have a convection oven, and also have noted that the tops are pushed over to one side.  Now I rotate the pans half way through and they are perfect.  Maybe if you switched the upper and lower pans midway (and rotated for good measure) that would work.  I bake multiple pans with the convection oven, but still find that the upper bakes faster than the lower, so I always rotate/change shelves in the middle of the baking time.  maybe that would work for non convection too.  

I do think that  my fan is too strong... it is also in the center of the back of my oven... 

My cupcakes bake fine without the convection, so I don't worry about it...

I've recently seen large cupcake pans in the stores that have 24 cupcakes per pan.

They're a lot larger than a 12-cupcake pan, but not as big as two pans.  They're designed to fit on a single oven rack.

I haven't tried them yet, but I am definitely tempted.

I also had the problem of my cupcakes being pushed to one side when baking in my fan oven, I now place a flat baking tray on a shelf near the top of the oven and it stops it from happening hth.

Thanks guys & sorry for not replying sooner! I dont use the fan option at the moment but I do have the option on the oven. I am going to try fan forced to see if that helps :) I will also switch the cupcakes over half way thanks guys!!