The recipe I currently use is one I found on here a year ago that calls for Duncan Hines box white cake, vanilla pudding , sour cream, egg whites, water, oil and I added buttered vanilla flavoring to it.

Everyone absolutely loves that recipe and I refuse to tell people I use box mix. But I need to find a recipe that taste just as good as that recipe. I will use chocolate cake and chocolate pudding or red velvet and chocolate pudding and it's great

But my problem is i'm not a baker that makes tons of cakes. I just make small cakes or cup cakes as friends need them to start getting pictures. I get lots of people that want a dozen cupcakes or want 24 but hal vanilla and half chocolate. So I end up tossing half each batter in the trash. I can't afford that. And some times the store is out of the flavor I need.
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I need a cake that is similar in taste but completely home made that I can easily half to get a dozen cup cakes. And I really need it to stand up to stacking and carving. I don't do wedding cakes but I do a few bigger baby shower cakes that need to hold and intricate carving.

Why wouldn't you just decrease the batter of the recipe that everyone loves?

I do it ALL the time when testing recipes.
A box of cake mix can be halved easily as well as the rest of the ingredients you listed, even eggs.

Store the remaining half of mix in a zip-loc bag, label it (flavor, date, etc.)...do the same for the pudding mix.


I recently made 1/4 recipes of the Hershey Chocolate Cake using 6 different cocoas.
I would've wasted soooo much of every ingredient if I had used the full amount.

Well didn't you just make Mrs "full of common sense" feel really dumb lol why didn't I think of that????

LOL

I have frozen the unused cake batter.

If your friends like your cake so much, what is wrong with telling them the truth? There is nothing wrong with using a mix.