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.
Okay, just to be clear – no butter? No oil? All the fat is from the egg yolks?
yes, that’s correct
Fascinating. I’m going to have to try this. I was looking for a recipe that used lots of egg yolks since I wanted to make a double batch of SMBC and this fits the bill perfectly. I’m going to sub fresh zest and lemon juice for the extract though. Maybe add a bit of True Lemon; love that stuff.
How did it turn out with the fresh lemon? I just made it with just vanilla and now waiting for it to cool 🙂
How cold should the water be? Refrigerator Cold or room temp?
refrigerator cold is what I used
tasted good but dry. will reduce baking time to 40. May try sour cream instead of water
How much lemon extract would you add to give it the flavor you described?
I would add 2 teaspoons lemon extract
Omg! I love this! I will have to reduce the sugar next time I make it but I can’t believe how fluffy it came out. It came out so soft it’s unbelievable!
hi i want to try your recipe but im cofuse by the measurement of baking powder is it 2tablespoon and 1/2teaspoon…or 2teaspoon and halfteaspoon of baking powder.
hope to hear from you thanks
2.5 teaspoons
I substituted the flour for gluten free flour and used my duck eggs for the egg yolks. This is my new favorite pound cake! So fluffy and moist! I didn’t have either of the pans called for in the recipe so I used extra large cupcake tins and baked at 350 for 30 minutes, they were absolutely perfect. Thank you for sharing this delicious recipe ❤️
So happy you liked it
Could this be baked in regular cake pans, as a layer cake, instead of a tube or bundt pan?
yes, the batter is slightly denser so the time will be a little longer. I always go by the times recommended on cake mix so start with those and watch closely.
I was so excited to see this, I like everyone have a lot of eggs and I have been making Macarons so lots of whites. I am going to try this for sure. I wonder and if you know that would be great. Do you think you could make it chocolate? Maybe add cacao powder replace some flour. Any thoughts
I think that would work. My chocolate pound cake has 4 T cocoa. It’s not a strong chocolate flavor though. https://www.callmepmc.com/chocolate-pound-cake/
I have made this several times using my own gluten free flour mix and a teaspoon of zanthum gum. Always a hit in our home.