Baking – subsitute for Aluminum foil in the oven? I am allergic to Aluminum

In a conventional oven, the majority of the heat is at the top.

You don't mention lowering the oven rack to compensate for the change in height. I'm fairly certain that would solve your problem.

Center rack is normally recommended - if you used a higher rack then that's definitely the reason it burned. But even if you used the center rack, you might need to lower it for a particularly tall cake. You might also need to extend the cooking time slightly to compensate for the lower effective temperature.

Note that this doesn't apply to convection ovens, which have a relatively constant temperature throughout.

Possible reasons:

• Horrible temperature control - this is simply a problem of cheap construction. One could theoretically build an excellent toaster oven with precise temperature control, but why would you?
• Low thermal mass - If you get an oven to 400F and open it for long enough to put in food, the result is an oven at very slightly less than 400F, and which will quickly return to 400F. Do that with a toaster oven, and who knows what temperature you'll get, or how quickly it will get to your desired temperature (if ever, see #1). This is not a slam at toaster ovens, this is just due to them being approximately 2% of the volume of a standard oven.
• Closeness to elements. It's easy for toaster ovens interiors to vary by nearly 50F from middle to edge, simply based on distance to elements

Now don't get me wrong, I once made some kickin' Oysters Rockefeller in a toaster oven, when I thought that they would be the difference between serving an appetizer and being allowed to serve breakfast the next morning (wink, wink). If you know what you're doing, and watch carefully and continually, a toaster oven can be an excellent source of high(ish) direct heat. But they are extremely difficult to control, and extremely unforgiving of errors. I can't think of a circumstance where a toaster oven would be my first choice of cooking tool (and that includes microwave, campfire, plumber's blowtorch).