I've been looking for a good, scratch white almond sour cream cake. I found one that looked promising, but for the life of me I just can't seem to make it work. I tried it twice before I gave up and made an almond amaretto cake instead, because I didn't want to waste more ingredients.

I made 2 batches of the recipe, divided among two 3-inch deep, 8-inch round pans. They were filled about 3/4 full. The first time, after about 1.5 hours in the oven, it still wasn't completely baked. It just never seemed to be done. I gave up, because I had to leave for work and hadn't anticipated it needing that much time in the oven.

I tried again yesterday and had the cakes in the oven for 2 hours. I also put a flower nail in each pan to help distribute the heat more evenly. After two hours, they looked done. The edges had begun to pull away from the side of the pan. A toothpick inserted in the middle came out clean. I pressed lightly on the top, and it sprang back. By all appearances, the cake was baked. But, I went to torte the layers, and there were still patches of underbaked cake, so it turned out unusable.

It's a shame, because I tasted pieces of the underbaked cake, and the flavor was exactly what I was looking for. But I just can't seem to get it to bake all the way through.

This is the recipe I've been trying

https://www.mycakeschool.com/recipes/almond-scratch-recipe/

Any thoughts on what the problem might be? Or recommendations for a different scratch WASC cake recipe to try in the future?

I’ve never tried making WASC cake from scratch so can’t say if it’s the recipe.   I’m wondering if it’s your oven.   Do use have gas or electric?  

Funny Agnes I have made this particular cake from mycakeschool many times. Never any problems. When you add sour cream, the cake can literally take an extra 15 to 20 minutes to bake. There was this cake I was making for a wedding...big one..14” x 3”. It was a sour cream lemonade cake. Normally should have taken 55-60 minutes to bake. My now oven was relatively new. So everything should have been peachy. I remember it took something like 2 hours for that cake to bake!!!!! New something was off. Called the manufacturer. They said get a good oven thermometer.  Place thermometer in the middle of the oven, then far right, far left, to get a accurate representation of heat distribution. My oven was off by 25 degrees!!! That’s quite a difference when baking. Manufacturer said look at the oven manual, which will tell you how to recalibrate the oven. To raise or lower the temperature. Another tip. Did you know you can finish baking a cake in the microwave???  Yup. I mean you can bake cake in a mug in the microwave, right. I had a a cake, like you, that when I cut in half to fill, there was a raw batter in the middle. I literally didn’t have time to bake another cake. So I placed cake on a microwave safe plate and nuked the cake fo 10 second bursts on about 60% power. Can’t remember now how long it took, but I think probably 20-25 seconds and the raw area was cooked. Microwave to the rescue!!

I used a gas oven. The only reason I don't think the oven is the problem is I baked chocolate sour cream cupcakes, red velvet cake, and a different almond cake recipe, and all of those baked in a reasonable amount of time.

I had no idea about the microwave! Does it change the texture of the cake? I guess it makes sense that if you can make a mug cake, you can finish a regular cake in the microwave, but it never occurred to me to try it. I'll have to keep that in mind if I have a similar problem in the future.

I'm wondering if maybe I did something wrong with the reverse creaming and the batter wasn't right? Not sure if that would make the cake bake improperly, but none of the other recipes I baked used that method. Maybe in the future I'll try making the recipe with the usual creaming method and see if that makes a difference.

I have no idea, I've never had that problem with any cake, scratch or starting with a cake mix.

So you have a gas oven. Can’t speak to that as never baked in one. Can’t imagine it being the reverse creaming method? But just don’t know. Especially since you made all those other cakes and they all turned out well?? I’d be tempted to try the recipe again, but just use the good ole fashioned cream the fat, sugar and eggs method. Wish I could have helped.

Follow Jan s story—get a good thermometer & find out if the oven temp is off.   Other than that I m at a loss in helping since I don’t bake scratch 

It’s June kakeladi... :o)      And I’d still give the oven thermometer a go. Even gas ovens can be calibrated. 

Unless you are strictly opposed to starting with a cake mix, you really can't bake a better cake than kakeladi's *Original* WASC recipe.  I've never had a fail.  I always back scratch unless the cake will be stacked or carved, then I always use the *Original* recipe because it is not only delicious, adapts to any flavor, nice and moist but quite sturdy at the same time.

https://www.cakecentral.com/recipe/7445/the-original-wasc-cake-recipe

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A fantastic recipe...... Look up White Velvet Layer Cake with strawberry raspberry marscapone buttercream. I found it on the site key ingredient....it is very almondy and a beautiful soft texture. It would go with about any icing, except chocolate. I've never had it fail.