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 Pixie, If a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, the cake is done. If baked in 2 eight inch round pans for one hour, I worry that your cake will be over
baked and dry. Possibly your oven is not heating correctly. It would be a good idea to buy an oven thermometer to make sure your oven is heating to the temperature you set for baking.
As usual excellent recipe. Have a question...I have seen on cooking shows to tap the cake pan lightly with batter in it a couple of times before baking to release air bubbles. Do you think this is a good idea or does it take away from the fluffy texture of the cake? Thank you!!
Hi Katherine, Yes, it is a good idea. We tap the pan several times to release the air bubbles and it doesn't affect the texture of the cake.
PURRFECT Cake layers! just lightly domed but rose beautifully. I had to increase the temp to 340 while decreasing time to 30mins in order due to my finicky oven that also likes to bake lopsided from time to time. Only had to level off each layer slightly, so it will be a beautiful 3 layer bday cake covered in fondant, unicorn head with horn and rose piped rainbow colored mane.
Do you think I can use creme bouquet flavoring instead of the almond?
Hi Sharon, Yes, it will be fine to use creme bouquet.
Thank you for the quick reply! I have another question please: I'm going to bake the cake in 2 9" pans tomorrow and freeze them for moistness. Bebe, if I want to fill and decorate it on Wednesday afternoon, should I defrost on Tuesday or wait until Wednesday and work with a cold cake? I'm very confused. P.S. This is a birthday cake for my two best friends and I want to get it perfect. BTW, I'm frosting it in buttercream. Thank you so much...I REALLY appreciate it!
I'm sure others will have their personal recommendations, but for me, I don't freeze mine due to limited space in my freezer, unless I intend to premake them for a future time. I tend to prelevel my layers, use a simple syrup to seal in the moisture, wrap heavily in plastic wrap and refrigerate, then leave out a half hour or so before I need to do the crumb layer, cool, frost, cool lightly, then I add my fondant as I'm mostly involved with children type birthday cakes.
Can I make this with yellow cake mix? I have a half box cake mix I want to use up
Hi Judy, Yes, you can.
Hi can I use butter golden Duncan Hines box mix?
Hi Taylor, I have never used the DH butter golden mix. I assume that it uses butter instead of oil. I did a quick search for comments on using golden butter vs the classic yellow and there were mixed reviews. I would think it would be fine to use for the WASC recipe. I would love to know your thought if you decide to use it.