I usually stick with chocolate or vanilla when I'm making a WASC and add flavouring to a white cake mix for other flavours. However I have a number of mixes including lemon, spice, german chocolate and yellow that I bought on sale. I usually make scratch cakes now, but when I want a fast, no fail cake I'll opt for a doctored mix, usually using Kakeladi's recipe.

I wanted to make a lemon cake using that recipe but I don't know that I've ever really used a lemon mix. Does it taste really artificial? Is it super yellow? Any one have suggestions to make it less so if it is? I'm hoping that by using Kakeladi's recipe, and maybe adding in some lemon zest, it may make it a bit fresher. I've got a ton of SugarShack's vanilla buttercream available, so I was going to mix some strawberry icing fruits into some of it for the filling and just use the vanilla for the icing.

Thoughts?

I have used lemon BC cake mix in the WASC recipe using egg whites. Used 2 boxes lemon box mix 2 c white sugar 2 c AP flour 1 1/2tsp salt 8 egg whites 2 2/3c water 2 c sour cream 2 tsp pure vanilla 2 tsp pure lemon extract and zested lemon. Very bright yellow and sweet and tangy cake. I did them as cupcakes and they tasted amazing. Same WASC moistness. Give it a go. I used freshly squeezed lemon juice in my BC instead of lemon essence. I just add lemon juice by the tbsp until satisfied with taste.

To me, the color of a yellow cake mix is an obnoxious yellow (I guess it all depends on the brand too). If you are going to do the WASC, what I suggest is use a white mix and add three tablespoons of lemon extract in addition to your vanilla. You can also add some lemon zest to the batter too. I would use whole eggs because that will give it a subtle yellow color without being neon.

Thanks everyone. What I ended up doing was using one lemon and one white cake mix because although I thought I had 4 lemon mixes, I only had three, and I needed two double batches. I added the Lorann Lemon Emulsion that I had along with some vanilla and butter flavouring. It turned out very nice, more of a subtle lemon flavour than full on.