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.
Is this the cake recipe you used for the spiral train cake? Would the Chocolate durable recipe work for the train cake?
Has anyone tried this with a gluten-free cake mix and gluten-free flour?
Hi Bebe! On March 15, 2016 you commented with your version of the doctored recipe which included vegetable oil but there was no sour cream listed. So I was about to run to the store with my list and was thrown off by that. Do you leave the sour cream out of the WASC cake now when using the 15.25 yellow or white cake mix?
Hello Coreen! To answer your question, this WASC recipe as listed at the top of the page should be made just as it is (sour cream and all). No changes are necessary to account for the change in box size.
I've altered the comment that you mentioned to make it a bit more clear. Mom was actually referencing/listing our doctored White Cake recipe in that post (where we actually did add a bit of flour to account for the change in box size.) -That was just to explain that while we didn't make any alterations to our WASC recipe, we did change up the other recipe a bit. I hope this helps!
I have been making this recipe for years (I have the link saved in my phone) but now it says to add canola oil. I have never added this since using this recipe. What’s happened? Why was that added?
Hi Leigh! I'm sorry that was confusing- I need to make a note in the recipe- Feel free to continue making the recipe the way that you always have! There have always been a couple of versions of this recipe floating around (one with oil, one without)-- we've recently been adding a little oil to our doctored recipes more often and thought we'd update this one as well. Its completely up to you- both versions of the wasc recipe are delicious!
This cake is AMAZING! I am a stickler about vanilla cake because it's my favorite. This cake has so much flavor & is incredibly moist. This is my new go-to vanilla cake!
Hi Jenny, Thank you for posting your comment on this recipe. We're very happy you like the recipe.
Hi. What frosting/filling do you recommend for this cake?
This is a cake recipe that can be paired with almost everything. If you leave out the almond flavoring and lemon flavoring you will have a basic vanilla cake. Adding a bit more almond flavoring and you could have a raspberry filling with vanilla buttercream. Cherry flavored buttercream goes well with almond and well as a butter pecan buttercream. Leaving out the almond and adding a bit more lemon goes well with a lemon curd filling and lemon buttercream. Also good with a coconut filling plus coconut frosting. Lots of possibilities with this cake.
Hi Melissa -
Can this recipe be doubled for a large batch?
Thank you
Michelle
Hi Michelle, Yes, the recipe can be doubled
Hi there, I was wondering if all of your recipes and tutorials are on Pinterest?
HI ejfan, Most of our cake recipe are on Pinterest and also pictures of cakes. The cakes that are video tutorials can only be viewed by members of the site.