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.
Thank you! My birds are laying as well.. I used four goose + one duck egg to make the angel food and pound cake. I used 1 tsp of coconut flavouring plus 3/4 C toasted coconut. It is delicious! I shall be making this cake several times this summer!
Hi, what type of attachment do I need to use to beat the egg yolks? Whisk or paddle?
Thank you
whisk
Hello, my hens are in a laying frenzy and I would love to make that cake. Can I use orange or grapefruit juice instead of water? Or would it affect the results?
Yes, you can. It will just add more flavor
Thank you! Making it now, I have an Angel Food cake in the oven.
You mention this cake as fluffy. Would it have enough structure to be a cake under fondant?
I don’t think it would. It is similar to an Angel food cake texture.
I noticed there is no fat in this cake and I thought it was odd. It wasn’t mistakenly left out was it?
It wasn’t. It’s similar to an angel food cake except with yolks.
A couple of suggestions and notes from a professional pastry chef:
The yolks are the fat in this recipe, so contrary to Laurie’s comment, there is a high percentage of fat in the recipe. That is why it’s especially important to let the separated egg yolks come to room temp for about half an hour before using. They won’t emulsify with the water in the recipe properly if added cold.
To accurately measure ingredients, get yourself a kitchen scale. A cup of AP flour should always weigh 4.25 oz or 120g. A large egg yolk weighs half an ounce, or 14g. Twelve yolks should weigh 6 oz.
Thank you for clarifying 🙂
If I want to use almond extract, then I assume I leave out the lemon?
Yes
Can I make it in a loaf pan?
yes
Can I mix lemon zest and poppy seeds into the batter? I’m thinking 2 tsp zest to 1 tsp extract? 4 tbsp poppy seed?
You can always give it a try, I haven’t tested it with those
Just made this recipe today and it turned out BEAUTIFULLY. Big and fluffy and golden, perfectly browned and sweet. My grandmother said she’s never gotten a pound cake to look so good– that’s high praise coming from a baker like her! Thank you so much for this recipe. ❤️
Made it! It was good! Didn’t have lemon extract so squeezed a lemon into batter.