Chocolate Ombre Cake and a cake mix extender recipe

For my daughter's birthday this year I made the popular ombre cake in pulled petal style.  Obviously I didn't get a picture of the best side, I was too busy trying to get it on the table for the birthday guests.     I used a chocolate butter cream and a vanilla (from here) and mixed to get the shades.  I learned that these two types of frosting do not play well together.  It ends up the more of chocolate that I added, the more gooey it got.  I had to refrigerate it to get the dots to stay long enough to pull them but the cake was still cold from the freezer over night so that helped them set up.  As you can see they did stay set up but the mixture of all the left over at the end, I ended up dumping rather than use again.  Did I mention that in addition to the birthday cake I made 11 (ELEVEN) dozen half-size (bigger than mini but smaller than regular) cupcakes for a Marching band bake sale.

I used a cake extender recipe just to try and make the box at least semi homemade.  When I can, I prefer a scratch cake but when I have to make a large or a lot of cake I use box mixes because they are cheap and a LOT quicker.     So in the end 3 cake box mixes made this 3 layer 8 in cake and the eleven dozen or 6 dozen whole size cupcakes.

This is also known as WASC or White Almond Sour Cream and usually starts with a white cake mix but you can use most any flavor of mix or added flavorings.  One nice thing about it is that it cuts out the Oil usually called for in a box mix but then you are adding extra sugar and the cream.  Oh well.  This recipe isn't necessarily my favorite extender recipe but it's the one I used this time.

WASC cake mix extender.

1 box cake mix
1 cup flour
1 cup granulated sugar
generous dash of salt
1 cup sour cream
1 cup water
3 whole eggs
1 tablespoon flavoring  ( I use 2 teas. vanilla and 1 teas. almond)

Mix dry ingredients together.  Mix wet ingredients together.  Beat together well.     Bake in usual manner (I do 325º for about 30 min for 1 8 in. round pan.)