Awesome white cake --that is, if you like delicious

Are you ready to 'up' your cake making abilities? I wanted to make a great vanilla/white choc cake for my friend's birthday, so I turned to allrecipies.com.   I love easy help like that! CLICK---I searched for a cake mix extender, meaning I add stuff to a box mix and make it bigger and better.  The reviews were great, so I tried it. I was wanting a cake that would be yummy, and  also be easy to flip out of the pan for decoration.  I found it.
I made it for the party, doubling it to make enough for 40 or 50 people. Everyone said it was delicious, so I wanted to share the recipe.  It was super easy and fun to make a great cake with ease.

Behold. I bring you---

White Almond Wedding Cake

• 1 (18.25 ounce) package white cake mix
• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1 cup white sugar
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/3 cups water
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2 tablespoons vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon almond extract
• 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
• 4 egg whites

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C). Grease and flour an 11x13 inch cake pan.( I used a large round non stick pan. Crisco then flour)
2. Stir together the white cake mix, flour, sugar, and salt in a large bowl until well mixed. Pour in the water, sour cream, vegetable oil, almond and vanilla extracts, and egg whites, and beat with an electric mix on low until all the ingredients are mixed and moistened but some lumps still remain, 4 minutes.( I just mixed well with a fork)
3. Pour the batter into the prepared cake pan, and bake in the preheated oven until the top is a light golden brown and a toothpick inserted into the center of the cake comes out clean, about 25 minutes. Allow to cool before frosting. ( I let it cool, eased it away from the edges with a knife and turned it upside down to slowly drop out on the platter.  Even if it doesn't come out perfectly from the pan, patch it together and the icing will cover your broken cake)

 

My icing--

• 1/2 cup crisco, butter flavor or regular  (I have made it with all crisco or all butter as well. The blend gives the best texture and flavor)
• 1/2 cup butter, room temperature
• 1-2 tsp vanilla flavoring 
• optional 1 tsp almond flavoring
• 4 -4 1/2 cups powdered sugar. ( I start with 2 cups, then add milk alternating to achieve consistency)
• 5-6 TBSP milk--adding more or less for consistency

1. First, mix the crisco/butter with hand mixer for blending and consistency. 
2. Next, add flavorings.
3. Begin by adding 2 cups of the powdered sugar and 3-4 TBSP milk, mixing with hand mixer
4. Lastly, add the remaining 2+  cups of sugar and 2-3 more TBSP of milk.  
5. Tweak it as you feel the need.  It ain't written in stone.

For this cake, I put fresh strawberries between the layers for color and flavor.  Then the idea came to me to put a ring of berries around the cake. It helped hide the icing blunders and added color and flavor. Yes!

I hope you put this to use and enjoy it. I have made it 3 times now, but this effort was the biggest yet.