I recently got up the nerve to up my prices and to justify it to the customer I blab on about how I make everything from scratch. Now I have a baby block cake and they want 2 of the blocks to be either cherry or strawberry but would really like cherry. She said she always uses a mix but the cherry mix is hard to find. the recipes I saw were like for loaf pans so I need something for a cake pan. Me and my big mouth, I could have just used the freekin' mix!

I wouild make a white cake and chop up some marachino(sp??) cherries in it. Make sure you dry the cherries well on paper towels.
If you want more cherry taste add about 1/2 teaspoon UNsweetened KoolAid. It will color the batter. Could also use the cherry 'juice' as part of the liquid.

Here's some recipes for cherry cakes, but I can't personally attest to them - you may have to do a "trial run" first:

http://www.recipezaar.com/128071

http://www.recipezaar.com/158063

http://www.recipezaar.com/192072 (If you want to reconsider a mix)

Good luck

Oh man thanks so much for the help. I've never even heard of cheery cake in any of my cookbooks, etc. I'm not really a fruit person though. Really appreciate the help

I just made some white cakes and sent them with my husband to work to find out which one is better (experimenting for a wedding). One was the WASC -- I used almond flavouring in it. One guy was convinced that it was a cherry cake -- didn't believe it was almond. And really, that almond flavour does smell reminiscent of maraschino cherries. So I definitely thinking adding marachino cherries to a white cake that has almond flavouring would work. You can use some of the juice for the liquid, which would turn it pink.

I made a cherry almond pound cake for my Baba's birthday. This is the recipe I used:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/Cherry-Pound-Cake/Detail.aspx

I used way more cherries than they said (I LOVE maraschino cherries). The first time I made it, my husband thought it was a bit dry. So when I made it for her birthday, I took it out sooner, but turns out it wasn't quite done in the middle so it sank. Used it anyway, because I had no time to make another, and it was fine.

Did you know you can buy Cherry Chips (mini sized) from King Arthur Flour? http://www.kingarthurflour.com/ You could add those to a white cake. The WASC cake comes to mind. I think it would be perfect!

I recently made a scratch white cake and subbed 75% of the milk for cherry juice. I used 100% cherry juice and it was kind of cherry flavored. If I did it again I would add some pink coloring to the batter though. I used vanilla extract in the cake, should have used almond.

for the frosting and filling I reduced some cherry juice and and then added it to IMBC with a little almond extract.

I added pink to the frosting just to make it seem more cherry like.