I'm looking for an all from scratch recipe that I can use as a base. I know the WASC recipe looks good but it requires a boxed cake mix which I'm trying to avoid. Any suggestions?

Sure, have a look in the recipe section. Anything that is vanilla can be flavored almond instead. There are tons of good scratch cake recipes in there, including a scrumptious buttermilk pound cake recipe that you could flavor with almond extract instead of vanilla.