My favorite 'Doctored" Cake Mix recipe

Ok, I have a confession to make... I usually don't make my cakes from scratch.... Yes, I do sometimes, I have a great carrot cake recipe, and a scratch chocolate cake recipe that turns out. BUT sometimes when making a cake, especially for stacked cakes, and vanilla cakes, sometimes they sink in the middle, sometimes they taste like pancakes rather than cake, and sometimes they squish because they are too soft and crumbly... SO!! I use cake mixes... But I doctor them up. I ran across this recipe when looking for a yummy lemon cake recipe. I can't remember where I found (Have tried to find since I made it but no luck)
The great thing about this recipe is you can use most any flavor of cake and pudding mix. And you can add a juice instead of water when making lemon or lime cake and sub any extract flavoring you desire! The possibilities are almost endless! With the cupcake shown above I made a vanilla cake and pudding mix, but added lime juice for the water and coconut milk rather than sour cream.
This cake is super moist but sturdy, holds up to stacking the layers and its just a yummy cake. Have fun with it and enjoy!

Di's favorite 'Doctored' Cake Mix Recipe
1 boxed cake mix (you decide the flavor)
1 small box instant pudding mix (you decide the flavor)
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup grapeseed oil
4 eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract (or like I said use lemon, lime, coconut or butter rum....etc)

 Preheat oven to 350 and prep your baking pans. I LOVE Wiltons Cake release and spread that on my pans and they pop right out after cooling.
Mix all the ingredients in the bowl of an electric mixer on low until combined. Then turn up the speed and mix for another 1 to 2  minutes. If your batter is really thick (I find some chocolate mixes really thicken a lot with the pudding mix, add a little more water) You want it to be like a brownie batter or pourable but not too runny. When making lemon or key lime cake I added about 1/4 cup juice and 1/4 cup water.

Divide your cake batter into your baking pans--this makes two 8 or 9 inch round cakes. Bake for about 25 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean when inserted in the middle. Another good test is to slight press your finger in the middle and it should spring back when done. Remove from oven and let cool for 10 minutes. Then remove from pans and finish cooling completely before icing.
 Hope you like this recipe as much as I do.