This easy White Almond Sour Cream Cake is doctored cake mix recipe that has been around for years! It is moist, fluffy, and delicious.
It is a moist and flavorful cake recipe that is versatile enough for cupcakes, and sturdy enough to handle light carving or being covered with fondant.
Doctored Cake Mixes vs. Scratch
Some bakers prefer to work with scratch recipes, while others prefer the convenience and consistency of doctored cake mixes.
If you ever want to spark a heated discussion, hop over to a cake website's message boards and ask which is better- mix or scratch. (Don't do it!)
For me, I have recipes that I LOVE that fall into both categories. Whether it is a scratch cake recipe or doctored cake mix doesn't matter so much to me as long as it tastes great.
Plus, with doctored cake mixes like this one, the cake mix is just the base--the secret is the ingredients and extracts that you add to make it your own.
This White Almond Sour Cream Cake is a great example of a tried and true doctored cake mix recipe that would please any crowd!
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 create new variations.
How to Make WASC Cake
This White Almond Sour Cream Cake recipe has been used and referred to so often that over the years cake forums use the WASC abbreviation ;0) .
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.
- 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.
Do you Have to Use Almond in this White Almond Sour Cream cake recipe?
I love the flavor and texture of this cake. The sour cream in the recipe gives it a soft consistency with a tighter crumb. I really like almond desserts and so for me, the hint of almond in this cake recipe is delicious.
However, if you are not a fan of almond, no problem! Simply leave the almond flavoring out and you will have a fantastic White Sour Cream Cake recipe to serve your friends and family.
Is this WAS Cake Suitable For Carving?
This cake would hold up just fine for light carving.
However, if your cake calls for more extensive carving, or tapering as with a topsy turvy design, the much denser "Durable Doctored Cake Mix Recipe" in our Recipes section would be my preference.
This White Almond Sour Cream cake is very versatile. You can substitute other cake mix flavors with great results.
We also have a fabulous Chocolate (doctored cake mix) version of this cake which you can find here!: Chocolate Sour Cream Cake: Doctored Cake Mix Recipe.
Where did the wasc recipe come from?
We discovered this popular White Almond Sour Cream Cake from cake mix years ago on CakeCentral.com. If you hop over to their site, I'm sure it is still there, along with years worth of variations and conversations about it ;0)!
Some variations call for vegetable oil in addition to the sour cream, others don't.
We have changed our White Almond Sour Cream Recipe over the years to include canola oil just for a bit more moisture (although the additional fat from the sour cream in the recipe does a good job off this also!)
White Almond Sour Cream Cake Recipe from Scratch
If you prefer scratch cake recipes (or like to experiment with both), we have a delicious Scratch White Almond Sour Cream Cake Recipe as well!
Don't miss these other delicious 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 are altered with additional ingredients to make them uniquely delicious. Enjoy!
We hope that you enjoy this recipe!
White Almond Sour Cream Cake~Doctored Cake Mix

This delicious White Almond Sour Cream Cake is a great, flavorful go-to doctored cake mix recipe. Many of our doctored cake mix cakes are based on this popular recipe!
Ingredients
- 1 box cake mix, sifted (we use cake mix without pudding in the mix)
- 1 cup (121g) all purpose flour
- 1 cup (200) granulated sugar
- generous dash of salt
- 1 cup (242g) sour cream or plain yogurt (greek yogurt is fine also)
- ¼ Cup (54g) Canola Oil
- 1 cup (240g) water
- 3 whole eggs
- 2 teaspoons (8g) vanilla
- ½ teaspoon (2g) almond (If you don't want almond, you can substitute additional vanilla)
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. Works well for cupcakes.
Decorating the White Almond Sour Cream 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!)
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Don’t miss our full collection of tried and true cake and frosting recipes from our Recipes Section! We have more doctored cake mixes like this one, as well as tons of tried and true scratch recipes.
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It will be fine to use cake flour in stead of all purpose , 1 cup plus 2 Tablespoons
can I use egg whites instead of whole eggs?
Can egg whites be used to make this for a wedding cake? Do I whip the egg whites first or how do I substitute using them? Thanks!