WASC Cake (Cake Mix)
This easy White Almond Sour Cream Cake is so popular that it has long been referred to by its abbreviation, WASC, in the cake world.
It is a moist and flavorful layer cake recipe that is versatile enough for cupcakes, and sturdy enough to handle light carving or being covered with fondant.
WASC cake is a great example of a tried and true cake mix recipe that would please any crowd. Keep it in mind as a birthday cake, bridal shower cake, baby shower cake, and more!
Table of Contents
Why we Love WASC Cake
- It goes with just about any filling and frosting that you can think of, and you can easily change it up with add-ins and extracts to make it your own or create new variations.
- Super easy to make
- Has a from-scratch texture thanks to the sour cream in the recipe
- Is a great "base cake recipe" which can easily be transformed with add-ins and extracts.
How to Make WASC Cake
You can find the full, printable cake recipe further down in this post. Here is a quick rundown of the steps!
- Preheat: Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F.
- Prepare the Cake Pans: Grease and flour two 8x2 round cake pans. (You could also divide the batter between three 8 inch cake layers if you would rather have an additional layer of filling).
- Dry ingredients: In the bowl of your mixer, combine dry ingredients and whisk at least 30 seconds to blend.
- Wet Ingredients: In another bowl, combine sour cream, water, vegetable oil, eggs, vanilla extract, and almond extract.
- Combine: Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stop after 1 minute to scrape the sides and bottom of bowl then continue to beat for the second minute.
- Pour into Pans and Bake: Pour into prepared cake pans and bake at 325 degrees....check at 35 minutes to see if middle of cake springs back when touched, a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake come out clean or with just a few crumbs attached, and the cake will be slightly pulled away from the pan.
Decorating the WASC Cake
The cake in our photo was frosted with our Classic Vanilla Buttercream. We used the beautiful piped buttercream technique which we teach in our free video tutorial for Cascading Rosettes of Buttercream!
There are infinite ways that this cake could be decorated, whether with a smooth finish, textured, or piped. If you are interested in cake decorating, please make sure to check out our collection of hundreds of free Cake Decorating Videos!
Recipe FAQs
More Doctored Cake Mix Recipes
We've made many doctored cake mix recipes over the years! These cakes are super moist, have wonderful flavor, and they taste like they were made from scratch.
Each of these cake mix recipes have been enhanced with additional ingredients to make them unique. Some have sour cream, some have instant pudding, fruit puree, jello, and more. There are so many creative ways to doctor up a simple cake mix!
Some of our favorites are our Easy Lemon Cake from cake mix, Easy Strawberry Cake, German Chocolate Cake from Cake Mix, and Italian Cream Bundt Cake!
Have you made this? We would LOVE for you to leave a ⭐️ rating as well as a comment and photo below! We really appreciate your feedback!
WASC Cake (White Almond Sour Cream)
Ingredients
- 1 box white cake mix, sifted (15.25 oz) (we use cake mix without pudding in the mix) This recipe will work for yellow cake mix as well.
- 1 cup all purpose flour (121g)
- 1 cup granulated sugar (200g)
- generous dash of salt
- 1 cup sour cream or plain yogurt (greek yogurt is fine also) (242g)
- ¼ Cup Canola Oil (54g)
- 1 cup water (240g)
- 3 whole eggs
- 2 teaspoons vanilla (8g)
- ½ teaspoon almond extract (If you don't want almond, you can substitute additional vanilla) (2g)
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 325 degrees.
- Grease and flour two 8x2 round cake pans. (You could also divide the batter between three 8 inch cake layers if you would rather have an additional layer of filling).
- In the bowl of your mixer, combine dry ingredients and whisk at least 30 seconds to blend.
- In another bowl, combine sour cream, water, oil, eggs, & flavorings. Add the wet ingredients to the dry and mix on medium speed for 2 minutes. Stop after 1 minute to scrape the sides and bottom of bowl then continue to beat for the second minute.
- Pour into prepared pans and bake at 325 degrees....check at 35 minutes to see if middle of cake springs back when touched, a toothpick inserted in the center of the cake come out clean or with just a few crumbs attached, and the cake will be slightly pulled away from the pan.
- We bake at 325 degrees to decrease the height of the dome on the cakes.
- Makes about 7 cups of batter.
Hi Melissa and BeBe;
By any chance, have you been able to buy the Sweetex high ration shortening in 25 pound container, instead of a 1 pound or 50 pound container? Please let us know.
Also, we made the high ratio shortening buttercream, and the crumb coat never really "crusted" 100%. It was out on the counter, covered in plastic, with a/c, since we live in Miami, Florida. And the batch had a lot of air bubbles, I added milk, teaspoon at a time, and it was still the same. Don't know how to fix this.
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Hi Maria, we haven't bought 25 lb. containers of Sweetex. This would be a good question to post on the forum.
I am wondering why your buttercream did not crust? If you covered it in plastic soon after completion that would keep it from crusting......it needs to be uncovered until crusted. To reduce the air bubble in buttercream, at the end of your mixing time, decrease the speed of your mixer to very slow for the last 2 to 3 minutes. This should help with that problem. Let me know.
Hi BeBe/Melissa...would u go by the baking time in the box or would it be different? I'm gonna try this on a 16" round and was curious about baking time?
Hi Maribel, a 16" round will take longer to bake than the time on the box . The cake is going to bake from the outside inward. Since this is so large you could grease and flower 2 or 3 rose nails and place near the center of the pan to help distribute the heat to that area. Once a toothpick comes out clean and the cake pulls slightly away from the sides of the pan it is done. You may need to place a piece of aluminum foil lightly over the top of the cake if the top starts to get too brown before it is done.
Maybe I should post this elsewhere but I don't know where so I will post it here. I use a very similar recipe to this one for cakes but when it comes to frosting them, they tear very easily and then I have crumbs and torn cake. I do a crumb coat first and frost final layer at room temperature. What am I doing wrong? My final frosted cakes never look as easy as yours to do. Help!!
I am also using your classic vanilla buttercream by the way
Hi Amber-- I'm sorry that you are having trouble!
I usually crumb coat when the layers are partially frozen (less fragile) and then apply the final coat to the cake when it's at room temperature--it sounds like that's what you are doing too. I think that the most likely explanation is that your frosting is a little too thick when you are frosting your final coat. Just add a little more milk to your frosting, just a very small amount at a time until you reach a consistency that can be spread more easily.
If you continue to have issues with tearing, you may want to experiment with the hot knife method of smoothing which allows you to freeze your cakes to firm them up before smoothing over with a hot knife. Or, another option is to frost the final coat with an icer tip. These are the very large piping tips that some people use to frost their cakes with. This cuts down on tearing also because when you go in to smooth your cake, you already have a layer of frosting between your bench scraper and the cake.
Please let us know if you have any more trouble! I think that it's most likely a matter of consistency.
Hi Melissa , would this cake be okay covering an 8 inch with fondant and stacking a 6 inch with fondant on top of it? If not which of your cake recipes is best to cover in fondant where it wont sink once fondnant is on top?
Hi Melissa,
I prefer not to use box cake mix. how can i substitute the box mix?
great website!
Hi Natalie, this recipe does hold up well with fondant. You are planning one tier with two 8" layers and the second tier with two 6" layers, right? The support system you use with dowels and cake board will hold up the weight of the second tier.
Hi Nadeen, we don't have a scratch white almond sour cream recipe yet.
You might like the Classic White Cake recipe in the recipe section.
Thank you so much for the bearheartbaking on the Cat in Hat! Fabulous !