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 Diana, For this cake we use two 8 inch round cake pans that are 2 inches deep. We grease and flour them. You could also add a parchment or wax paper round to the bottom of the pan for extra insurance against sticking. You would grease your pans, add the parchment paper, grease it also then flour the pan.
Do you change anything in this recipe if baking cupcakes?
Hi Sharlyn, Usually cupcakes are baked at 350 degrees for 18 to 20 minutes (checking at 18 minutes). Because this recipe uses a cake mix
the cupcakes will have a higher dome than when using a scratch cake recipe. We would usually bake this recipe at 350 and trim off the dome if it was higher than we wanted because frosting is going to cover the top. If you want a lower dome you could bake at 325 degrees, and baking time would increase a bit.
Hi... can this batter be tinted
Hi Kathy, Yes, the batter can be tinted.
Hi :)
I tried this for the first time as a trial run( I need to make cupcakes for a wedding ) and used Betty Crocker Butter Pecan mix....
I'm a scratch baker, and found the mix by itself was lacking, so tried this...just using vanilla
I thought the comment would be that the flavour was muted, but instead they said it was too dense ( I thought so too) Is there anything that I could add to " de-densify " ? Thank you!
Hi Jane, If you would like a less dense cupcake, I think you will like this simple recipe from the recipe section, White Cake (doctored cake mix) here is a link https://www.mycakeschool.com/recipes-tutorials/white-cake/. Though mayonnaise may sound a bit unusual, it adds moistness and richness to the recipe. It will work with any flavor of cake mix. You can leave out the almond flavoring if you like. The vanilla extract helps take away the box cake mix flavor. I hope it works for you.
Thanks BeBe ...but I do want the butter pecan flavour to be prominent...and I have to also make a small cutting cake ...since my tiers are high usually, I'm concerned about the box mix holding up under fondant while travelling to their venue....
Will the version with just mayonnaise added be a smaller batch..like cake mix alone? Because the WASC made more..I was able to get 24 good sized cupcakes using roughly 52g of batter in each...Aah !!
Hi Jane, I didn't realize you were making a cake also. The White Cake (doctored) will not hold up to fondant or make as many cupcakes as the WASC. To lighten up the recipe for a less dense cake you could try replacing the 1 cup all purpose flour with cake flour. Also, you could separate the egg whites from the yolks. Add the yolks with the other ingredients, beat the egg whites to the soft peak stage and fold into the cake batter at the end. Though I have not tried this it seems logical that it would work. I am going to give it a try soon. Good luck!
Hi, I need to make a cake using 2 loaf pans, 8x4. Will this recipe work if I extend the time of baking to 55-60 min? Should I lower the temp to 300 and/or use rose nails? Thanks in advance!
Hi Tabs, This recipe makes approximately 7 cups of cake batter. You should have about 3 1/2 cups batter for each pan. I think the pans could hold 4 cups of batter. I have not baked this recipe in a loaf pan, but it will be fine to do so. It will help with distributing the heat to use a rose nail, though not absolutely necessary. Bake at 325 degrees, check for doneness at 35 minutes, it could take up to 50 minutes. If the top seems to be getting too brown, cover loosely with a piece of aluminum foil. The cakes will be done when a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean or with just a few crumbs attached. Let cool in the pan 10 minutes then turn out and let cool completely.
Tried this today. Used the creme bouquet and 1/2 tsp of Vanilla flavoring. Also subbed 1 C of milk for the water. Reminds me a angel food cake. Yummy!