thoughts on high altitude baking

The problem with baking up high is that you don't know what the cake should be like in the first place, or even if the recipe works reliably at sea level. Obviously I can go on how it tastes and looks when I make it. But how do I know I'm starting with a decent recipe in the first place? 

With the cupcake bakeshop blog, I can stare at the photos of the cupcakes and attempt to get mine to look similar. They look like they taste good. 

I do wonder if some recipes just can't be adapted for high elevations.

I've been cleaning out the recipe/cookbook shelves tonight, and found some more chocolate cake recipes that are similar to the Caldera cupcake recipe, but with variations. I've also found a ton of JP's mom's old recipes, some of which I should try out sometime. 

One chocolate cake recipe I found is from a Scharffenberger box of chocolate. It's called Alise's Velvet cake. It has 8 oz of chocolate, less butter, fewer eggs, not a lot of flour, and some buttermilk. Buttermilk is a traditional High Alt. fix, so this recipe looks promising.

Another recipe that looks similar is Bittersweet Chocolate Cake, from the Silver Palate cookbook. It uses a whopping 14 oz of chocolate (wooooo!), 12 eggs, and the usual flour, sugar, etc. It uses whipped egg whites which tends to work well up this high. They also have some other chocolate cake recipes that sound good: Decadent Chooclate Cake is one of them.

One idea I've had is to use the Caldera Cupcake recipe, but beat the egg whites separately. I might have to try that.