Converting a tray of 12 cupcakes recipe to a 9×13″ pan
Batter scales with volume, not with width. A tray of 12 cupcakes holds about 6 cups filled to the brim, and a 9×13″ pan holds 14 cups, so you need 133% more batter. Multiply every ingredient — including the eggs, which is the awkward one — by 2.33×.
The number people miss is depth. Two pans can hold the same volume and still bake completely differently, because what matters is how thick the batter sits: volume divided by bake surface. Here that moves from about 0.7″ to 1.2″. Batter sits deeper in the new pan, so the center needs longer to set. Increase bake time roughly 15–25%; start testing at the original time.
Because the batter ends up noticeably deeper, drop the oven by 25°F (≈15°C). At the original temperature the outside sets and browns well before the centre is cooked, which is how you get a cake with a dark crust and a raw seam through the middle.
How many pans one batch fills
Going this way, one cupcakes recipe doesn't fill a single 9×13″ pan — it comes to about 43% of one, so you'd get a noticeably shallow bake. Scale the recipe up by 2.33× instead and fill the pan properly. A cake baked in a pan that's too big for it dries at the edges before the centre has any height to it.
A caution worth reading
Volume conversions hold well for cakes, brownies and quick breads — anything poured. They hold less well for recipes where structure comes from the pan itself: a delicate chiffon or angel food climbs the ungreased side of a tube pan, and a loaf's shape is part of how it bakes. For those, scale the ingredients by all means, but expect the texture to shift, and use the skewer rather than the recipe's clock.