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.
Made this today. Used Betty Crocker Vanilla Cake Mix and with plain flour (we don't have all purpose flour here in Aus). I also used a non stick round pan, 23cm x 9cm (9x3.5). Baked it for 1 hour and 30 minutes at 160°C (fan forced). It turned out just alright. Edible, but I think I need to find an Australian version, as things here are just not the same as in the States. Ingredients are not the same or available, measurements are off, esp the measuring cups, surprisingly, they are not the same. I have measuring cups from the States. That's why I prefer weighing the ingredients. I have a whole heap of baking pans, but none of them measured 8x2 (approx 20cm x 5cm) :( Having said all that, I still had fun experimenting :D Thanks, BeBe.
Hello. Besides the sour cream, why we won't be using any oil? I'm looking for a very moist cake
Hi Joan, Our recipe does not have oil. I have seen some WASC recipes that have 2 Tablespoons oil, you can add that to the recipe if you like.
Can you use egg whites only for this? I'd like it to be as white as possible. Thanks
Hi Linda, Yes, you can. Use 4 egg whites instead of 3 whole eggs.
I made this cake yesterday for a mermaid themed baby shower and it was a hit! I followed the recipe exactly (besides adding food coloring to the cake) and also used the suggested Vanilla Buttercream recipe. It was so moist, not overly sweet and the almond taste was just perfect. I did use 9” round pans instead but had plenty of batter.
Hi Lauren! Thanks for your feedback, love your photo! So happy to hear that you loved the recipe. xo
Hi Lauren, Your cake is lovely!! Thanks so much for posting your nice review.
Hi is there a reason why people suggest not to use Pillsbury vs another cake mix? What’s the difference?
Hi Jessica, It is fine to use Pillsbury for most cake recipes. If a recipe has instant pudding as an ingredient, using Pillsbury cake mix might cause it to be too dense because the cake mix also has pudding in the mix. Duncan Hines and Betty Crocker do not. Otherwise, it is personal preference on which brand you use. When Pillsbury changed its formulation and decreased the amount of mix in a box, we thought it also changed the flavor. That is when we switched to Duncan Hines.
Makes perfect sense. Thanks so much for the clarification!
It’s been an hour but the cake top still is not brown. What should i do? The toothpick came out clean. Is there a picture of this cake as it came out of the oven?