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 make 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. (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 golden brown or when 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.)
- Store in an airtight container 4 days or on countertop or 1 week in the refrigerator.
Notes
Nutrition
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Marie says
This was great. I used 4 cups of fine milled almond flour, 1/2 cup of allulose, 1/2 cup of sulcrulose to replace the sugar and flour since I battle reactive hyperglycemia. My blood sugar drops very low when I consume carbs and sugar. Cook time was 35 minutes and I let the cake cool for an hour before I cut into it. The cake comes out with a similar texture to corn bread, but fluffy! I’m very pleased with the recipe.
A says
I forgot to add the water and ruined the whole thing xD
Manja Yirka says
I enjoyed making this. I had eggs to use up and making this was a good way to do it. Unfortunately, it turned out dry. I had baked it for 50 minutes, but perhaps should have cut it down. I know everyone’s oven is a little different and, though my oven is relatively new, I have never tested the temperature to see how accurate it is. Disappointed in the dryness. Any suggestions on how to improve this in the future? thanks
Jackie Murawski says
Any suggestions on how to turn this into a chocolate marble cake?
Paula says
Melt 3 ounces unsweetened baking chocolate, let it cool slightly, then stir it into half of the cake batter.
Layer the chocolate mixture and the vanilla mixture alternately in your tube pan.
Marti Palmer says
Five stars are not enough for this cake, it is wonderful! Have passed it on to my friends. THANK YOU, we make a lot of Angel Food, so always have left over egg yolks. this uses them up in a delightful, tasty manner. I wish I could post the picture of my cake for you to see!
Paula says
So happy you liked it!!
JB says
This turned out well but the egg yolks flavor / smell is strong. Any suggestions on how to mask it further? I think increasing the essence might make it overpowering.
Paula says
Was it strong after it cooled?
Vannessa says
Hi! I decided to make the cake in 6 inch rounds as I always have leftover yolks from making macarons. Cake turned out pretty but it makes a “sponge” sound when touched. Is this normal or did I do something wrong?
Paula says
Sound perfect to me. That means it’s fluffy.
Helene says
Made this cake a few times
Used gluten free flour and it came out lovely
Although I put some of Isabellas add in
My whole family loves it
Thank you😋
Pizzannoo says
I came across this recipe and I’m excited to try it but does all the egg yolks have to be room temperature I had 9 room temperature and the other 3 weren’t.
Paula says
That should be fine.
Samantha says
Hi there! I’m looking to make this tomorrow after making an angel food cake. I’d like to flavor it with almond extract, can you tell me how? Thank you!!
Paula says
I’m sorry for the delayed response. I had so much going on yesterday I didn’t get to look at these. I would use the almond extract instead of the lemon extract. If you want, you can do 1 teaspoon vanilla and 1 teaspoon almond. Or, you can do 2 teaspoons almonds.
Camille says
I’m planning to make this recipe this weekend, and I’m noticing it uses no oil?
I just want to make sure!
Thanks.
Paula says
That’s correct. It’s more like a sponge cake than a pound cake.
Suzette says
How many mililitres is your cip measure? 250 ml?
Ashley Jarvis says
Can I make this in muffin tins?
Paula says
Yes, bake at 350 and start watching at 18 minutes for regular size cupcakes
Sam says
Could you use cake flour instead of all purpose flour?
Paula says
Yes
Anne Zaya says
Thank you for sharing as I always have 12 yolks left from my zucchini/carrot muffins.
Sal says
Can I add in choc chips or blueberry in this recipe?
Katherkne says
Good morning
I don’t have lemon extract but would like this cake lemon flavored. I have tons of lemons though. Can you tell me how I could do this? Thank you so much.
Monique says
Amazing cake. This is a keeper.
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?
Aanchal says
Hi, I don’t have a tube pan or bundt pan. I do have round 6*3 and 8*3 and a square 8*8*3 pans. I am also planning to half the recipe. which pan should I bake it in? and time and temperature will remain same or will they differ?
Paula says
The 8×8-inch will probably be best, refer to this post. I think it’ll help you. https://www.callmepmc.com/can-i-bake-a-pound-cake-in-a-9×13-inch-pan/
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.
Amy says
My bundt pan is also too small, I filled it about 2/3rd full and stopped pouring. I’m going to resize the recipe, but it was so good, I will make it again.
Paula says
Or use the extra batter for cupcakes
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.
Deborah Potts says
Excellent recipe! One of the best pound cakes I have ever made. The crumb was moist and soft. Easy to cut and serve. I used orange extract instead of lemon and the cake had a wonderful flavor. This is a recipe I will use again. Thank you.