Twelve Yolk Cake
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A great use of leftover egg yolks, Twelve Yolk Cake, is golden and tender. This is a delicious basic cake recipe that’s not overly sweet. Serve this with a good vanilla ice cream and rich caramel sauce.
Versatile and delicious, you’ll want to pin this 12 Yolk Cake to save it.
Twelve Yolk Cake
When a reader asked me if I had a Twelve Yolk Cake recipe, I became intrigued. She sad the twelve yolks made a pound cake and the twelve egg whites, in turn, are used for an Angel Food Cake.
Well, I had never heard of this but got busy searching through old cookbooks to see what I could find. The recipe below is an adapted version of a twelve-yolk cake that I found. As well, be sure to make my Angel Food Cake.
This is not what I truly call a ‘pound cake’ because it is more airy and fluffy than a traditional dense, small crumb, pound cake. In fact, I would classify this as a ‘sponge cake’ in texture.
However, Twelve Yolk Pound Cake is soft, rich with a buttery-like texture from all the yolks. Furthermore, because of the number of golden egg yolks, this cake has a lovely golden color.
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Make all my pound cakes, get the recipes> Pound Cake Reviews Series.
12 Yolk Cake Tips
- Coincidently, you can use your favorite flavoring in this cake. Good basic flavorings to try are vanilla, lemon, coconut, or almond.
- This cake is mixed together differently than most pound cakes. Therefore, you may want to read through the directions entirely before beginning the recipe.
- Twelve yolks make about one liquid cup measure. If you have medium or small eggs, you may want to measure them in a cup to assure you have the correct amount.
- You’ll want all the ingredients to be at room temperature. (Except for the water in this recipe.)
- Also, you’ll need to sift the flour before measuring. For baking, it’s very important to correctly measure all the ingredients. Flour is easily measured incorrectly. Please read this post on How to correctly Measure Flour.
- Serve this with ice cream and caramel sauce, chocolate sauce, or blueberry sauce.
Tools for Baking
- A larger bundt
- Or this tube pan
- Favorite spatulas
- For all my baking essentials, visit my Amazon Store.
Twelve Yolk Cake
Ingredients
- 12 large egg yolks room temp
- 3 cups all-purpose flour
- 2 and ½ teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 2 cups granulated sugar
- 1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract or vanilla or almond
- 1 cup cold water or milk
Instructions
- Prepare a 10-inch (12-cup) tube pan or 12-cup bundt pan with non-stick spray.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. (I recommend you Calibrate your oven!)
- Sift flour, baking powder, and salt together.
- In a mixing bowl, beat egg yolks until very fluffy and thick.
- Gradually beat in sugar and beat 2 minutes on high speed, stopping to scrape the bowl.
- Reduce speed to low and add vanilla, lemon, and cold water.
- Gradually, but quickly add sifted flour mixture while beating on low, scrape bowl.
- Beat only long enough to blend, about 2 minutes.
- Pour batter into prepared pan.
- Bake 50 to 60 minutes or until lightly golden or until a pick inserted in thickest portion of the cake comes out clean or with dry crumbs. (Watch closely if you haven't calibrated your oven. Baking pans can affect baking times as well. If it turns out dry you cooked it too long.)
- Cool cake for 15 minutes on wire rack before removing from the pan. Loosen sides of cake from pan with a spatula, then remove from pan. Cool completely on wire rack.
- Store in an airtight container 4 days or on countertop or 1 week in the refrigerator.
Nutrition
Nutritional information given is an automatic calculation and can vary based on the exact products you use and changes you make to the recipe. If these numbers are important to you, I recommend calculating them yourself.
It raised beautifully and probably great with sauce or ice cream, but thought it a bit dry and very sweet. Does it need butter or is it just too much baking powder? Maybe a little less sugar?
Cut back on your cooking time a little next time.
I made this cake once before and I had to make it again. But this time I thought I knew what I was doing and added the sugar into the flour. I am not scratching this batter and just added the water to the eggs and then added the egg mixture into the flour. Oh, I messed up but I believe it will be ok. If not my chickens will have a nice bread to eat. This bread was amazing the first time but be sure you follow her advice and read through the directions before you start preparing the batter. It’s not like other cake mixtures. I learned a lesson today😊. Thank you for your detailed explanation of this recipe. I love it when the baker talks us through how to dos.
❤️ thank you for your kind words. I have mixed recipes incorrectly myself – it happens. How did it turn out?
I generally don’t leave reviews on recipes but this one takes the cake 🙂
Like many others have said it has more of an angel food cake texture mixed with a sponge cake density, it was perfectly moist and had a gorgeous angel food cake crust on top, crispy and delicious surprise. It is not too sweet nor is it savory, we ate it as is and both of my kids adored it. I can’t wait to experiment with flavors but for now this couldn’t have been a better use of my 12 egg yolks– THANK YOU!
I’m so happy you enjoy it! Thanks for your kind words.
Thanks for the recipe. Was struggling to find a use for 12 spare yolks after making swiss meringue buttercream. I baked for 50 minutes and I think it could have been done at 40-45 mins as it was slightly dry in texture. I baked it in a chiffon cake tin.
Just came across this recipe. I have an old community cookbook that my grandmother submitted a recipe for 12 yolk angel cake. This recipe reminds me of that one. but less finicky. I have some yolks that need to be used so I’ll give this a go this weekend. Thanks!
This cake came out really good. It is more similar in texture to a sponge cake. I did check it at 45 minutes because I know my oven temp can be off and the pan I used is a darker pan, it was perfect, not dry at all. So glad I now have a recipe to use up a lot of leftover egg yolks in one go. Thank you!
This cake turned out really good. As noted, not too sweet and would make a great vehicle for a sauce, glaze, or ice cream.
After making an angel food cake, I wondered what to do with the yolks. I came across this recipe and so glad I did. I followed the recipe and it turned perfectly. I received rave reviews from my Husband and son.
Thank you
Brenda
I made this as muffins. Orange essence worked really well. Very tasty with a refreshing aroma. I noticed that when i baked the first batch to be golden, they were dry. I took the e second batch out when they were still very pale and they were perfectly done and moist.