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, I have a question. To make this a vanilla only cake do I just add the 2 1/2 teaspoon to the mix and leave out the 1/2 of almond extract or do I add 3 teaspoons of vanilla extract to the mix?
Hi Linda, I add just the 2 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract when I want vanilla only cake. Flavorings are always a personal preference so feel free to experiment.
I made this with a yellow cake mix a couple of nights ago and it is truly to die for!! I was wondering how well it works for cupcakes?? I have a 25th anniversary party coming up where I have to do 300 cupcakes and this would be a great money saver to extend mixes if it works well for cupcakes! Thanks!
Hi Jennifer, yes, we like to use the recipe for cupcakes also.
Made up the batter for 300 cupcakes in this recipe today and got it in the freezer ready to go for next week!! I did a test cupcake to taste and it's DIVINE!!! Thanks for sharing your recipe!!
Hi Jennifer, so glad that you liked it! I'm curious about freezing the batter, we haven't tried that.
I have always frozen my leftover batter in a gallon ziplock bag. Sometimes someone just orders 1 dz cupcakes and I dont want to just bake them and have them laying around to eat LOL It thaws perfectly in a an hour'ish at room temp or if you work you can just toss it in the fridge in the morning and it's ready when you get home. Ease of it is snip the tip of the bag and easily fill your pans or cupcake papers. It NEVER affects the flavor or texture. GREAT tip someone gave me on a decorators group on facebook!!
What a great tip, I'll be freezing some batter the next time I make cupcakes. Thanks for letting us know.
Hi Melissa and Bebe: I know you guys are not high elevation, but I'm working at 7,000 ft. Have you heard of anyone using this recipe at high elevation, and the cake or cupcakes not rising properly? I usually have to severely doctor cake mixes anyway, but would like to try this and was curious of your feedback. Thanks, ladies :)
Great Recipe! I used this yesterday to make the Thomas the Train Engine cake. The cake was sturdy for carving while at the same time moist for a wonderful flavor.
Thank You!
Hi Jackie--YAY!! So happy to hear that!
@Kelly--I wish that I could help you with the high elevation question. I would post this in the forums.. of all of our members, we will hopefully have someone that has experience with this!
Hi,
I think I already know the answer to this question, but I was wondering if this mix recipe is okay to use under fondant, I read the whole forum and could not find a definitive answer.