A great use of leftover egg yolks, Twelve Yolk Pound Cake, is golden and tender. A great basic cake that’s not overly sweet. Serve this with a good vanilla ice cream and rich caramel sauce.
Twelve Yolk Pound Cake is versatile and delicious.
When a reader asked me if I had a Twelve Yolk Pound 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.
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 read my Angel Food Cake.
If you been following and/or making my pound cakes in my Pound Cake Reviews Series, this is not what I truly call a ‘pound cake’. 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.
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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Twelve Yolk Pound Cake
- 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. I used large eggs. 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 room temperature. (Except the water in this recipe.)
- As well, 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.
- You can 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 Pound 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 vanilla
- 1 teaspoon lemon extract
- 1 cup cold water
Instructions
- Prepare a 10-inch (12 cup) tube pan or 12 cup bundt pan with non-stick spray.
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
- 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 golden brown or when pick inserted in thickest portion of the cake comes out clean or with dry crumbs.
- Store in an airtight container 4 days or on countertop or 1 week in the refrigerator.
Notes
Nutrition
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Helene says
How is it best to store this cake?
Thank you
Paula says
Personally, I prefer to store in the fridge, but this cake can be stored in an airtight container on the countertop.
Ruth says
This is the same recipe my mom used for sponge cake, always after making an angel food cake. Not what I’d call a pound cake.
Paula says
If you read the post, you’ll see my notation on that.
Kathy says
Found this easy, quick recipe after making an angel food cake, using 1 dozen fresh eggs from my parents’ chickens. I measured the egg yolks and didn’t have a full cup, so I added a whole egg and beat it with the yolks using the KitchenAid mixer. Perhaps I should have beat them longer, because it didn’t look like I thought it would, but I thought the additional whole egg could have changed how it turned out. I used almond flavoring, one of my favorites, and in combination with the lemon the result was one of the best cakes ever, according to my family! I baked it in a tube pan, the batter was beautiful, and it baked for exactly 1 hour.
Ali says
Does this cake freeze well?
SV Teacher says
I made this recipe twice. The first time I beat the egg yokes until I thought they were fluffy, resulting in a heavy but tasty pound cake. The second time I beat them with my Kitchen Aid mixer on 10 for a long time until they started to resemble stiff beaten egg whites. This cake is marvelous! It is very light and looks just like the picture! What a wonderful recipe!
Judy Tetlow says
It may be my mistake, but I feel like something was “off” on the recipe. It looked like a huge lava flow all over my oven; even though with I smelled something burning put foil under the pan. Although it was delicious! I was surprised that there was no butter or oil and quite a bit of baking powder. It took longer to bake than specified, maybe an hour 15 minutes. If I try it again, I will likely cut back a little on the water or use two pans, the batter came to the top of the pan before I put it in the oven. OR maybe I beat the yolks too much?
Paula says
I’ve made it 100s of times by this recipe. I feel like your bundt pan is too small.
Julie says
Can I freeze the pound cake ?
Paula says
Yes, wrap airtight. Pound cakes freeze beautifully.
LaShun says
My teenage daughter performed an unrelated baking experiment using egg whites. She asked me if I should save the yolks. I said yes, and stumbled across this recipe.
Since I only had six egg yolks, I cut the recipe in half. In an effort to reduce the carb/sugar content, I used coconut flour (1/3 cup) and Lakanto baking monkfruit sweetener (1 cup.) To my chagrin, I realized I didn’t have lemon or almond extract. So I used the banana extract that I had instead to go along with the Mexican vanilla extract I had.
I had enough batter for two ramekins. I baked them for 45 minutes, but I think it could’ve baked 5 – 10 minutes less. The end result was better than I expected! Moist & flavorful.
Paula says
Love your substitutions.