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.
How long do you beat the eggs?
Until they’re fluffy and thick like meringue.
This cake is amazing! It came out perfectly. I make a merengue cake often and now I know what to do with my egg yolks. It’s delicious only next time I will use almond extract instead of lemon extract.
Can I use a cake pan or loaf pan instead if tube pan
Yes, you can use any size can pan. It will make two 9×5-inch loaves.
Can you make this gluten free?
You can use the 1 to 1 gluten free flour to make it.
I made this delicious pound cake. Ever so slightly crispy outside tender cake underneath. This is definitely what I’ll make when using extra egg yolks up. Fresh strawberries and yogurt, yummmy
I just made this cake for the second time. The first time I made it I think I baked it for about 55 minutes and it was very dry. This time I tested it at 40 minutes and it was still not done but getting close so I gave it another 3-4 minutes and it came out perfectly moist and light. Several notes: If you want to freeze the yolks (maybe after just having made an angel food cake) you can do so but mix them with 5 tsp of sugar, then freeze. Remember to remove 5 tsp of sugar from the sugar called for in the recipe. Let them come to room temperature and REALLY beat them until very light colored and fluffy. Weigh your flour, 360 grams for 3 cups of flour and remember that cakes bake faster in dark colored pans like my Bundt pan. I hope this helps you have a better result.
This cake was very good, friends loved it but definitely would not call it light and airy. Didn’t have lemon extract so used lemon zest & juice, nice flavor. I had no ice cream or caramel sauce but it was very good with a chocolate glaze & whipped cream. Nothing like guilding the lily.
Nice cake, easy to over bake though is not a pound cake. I quote” Pound cake has more fat than regular cake, and has four ingredients: butter, eggs, flour, and sugar.“ The ratio use to be one pound of each though modern pound cakes use a different ratio still use the same four ingredients. Your recipe is missing butter therefore not a pound cake.
😂😂😂You clearly didn’t read the post.
I just made angel food cake & was so excited to find a recipe that will use all my leftover yolks at once! I’m not a big lemon fan though… almond intrigued me… my kids are big time strawberry fans too. Would I just replace lemon extract for another extract in the same amount?
Yes, you can. Almond will be great.
I made this pound cake today and it turned out great! The outside was crispy (don’t know how else to describe) and the inside was light, soft and moist! I baked it for 51 minutes.
The cake was super dry. No Thanks!
If it was dry you over-cooked it.