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.
Can you make this in round tins for a layer cake? What size tins would you use?
I haven’t tested it in a round cake pan. Typically a 8-inch round cake layer bakes in 25 to 29 minutes
What no oil or butter? What makes it buttery???
I would imagine because the yolks are pure fat, they take the place of oil or butter, which are also pure fat.
This seems more of a sponge type cake. Would it lend itself to baking in a 1/2 sheet pan and made inti a jelly roll?
It is very light. Richer than an angel food cake. It probably will make a great jelly roll, but I have not tested it.
Used non-stick cooking spray in my non-stick bunt pan but the cake is stuck tight even after running a thin blade along the sides.
Not sure what I did wrong, but thought I followed the recipe exactly. It overflowed the bundt pan quite a bit, making a mess of the oven. Anyone else have that problem? I used farm fresh eggs.
I have made this recipe three times now (after I make an angel food cake) and it is delicious but it always comes out a little dryer than I would like. Can i substitute some water for sour cream or something else to make the resulting cake more moist?
Help! I want to make this cake, but don’t have lemon extract. Choices on hand: lemon essential oils (can be consumed) or lemon zest.
lemon zest
Can this cake be frozen? If so, for how long? Also, how LONG should the yolks be beaten?
It can be frozen. I don’t care for anything frozen for longer than 3 to 4 weeks. I didn’t time the eggs when I was beating them, I beat them until they were ‘fluffy’ and lighten to a pale yellow in color.
Made a gluten free coconut version with coconut flour, 1can of coconut milk instead of water and coconut extract. Baked in a loaf pan, sliced and served with homemade lemon curd and it was delicious! Thank you for the great recipe!
That sounds delicious!
What a great recipe for 12 Yolks! Lemon extract was a perfect pairing for the golden cake! Served it lightly adding with my homemade Bluebarb sauce, perfection.
Thank you