TWELVE YOLK POUND CAKE
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A great use of leftover egg yolks, Twelve Yolk Pound 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 Pound Cake to save it.
TWELVE YOLK POUND CAKE
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.
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 Pound 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 Pound Cake
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Save To Your Recipe BoxIngredients
- 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.)
- 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.
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
Could this be cooked on a baking sheet and used to make a roll?
Yes, it would be wonderful
I made a gluten free Angel Food cake for my birthday and didn’t want to waste the yolks. Thank you for helping me prevent food waste. I substituted the flour for Better Batter (gf floud mix) and used all vanilla extract. I baked it in a loaf pan. Very delicious cake.
Thank You for sharing your Twelve Yoke Pound Cake. The Cake is so good. I was making a wedding cake for my grand daughter and I had 36 yokes to use. I didn’t want to not use them in some thing.
This cake doesnt need any oil or butter?
No, it doesn’t
I don’t have a bundt pan, do you think could I use an angel food pan or loaf pans instead?
Yes, you can use either
Can you bake this in cup cake tins?
yes, you can
can you use a loaf pan?
Yes, but you will need 2, 5×9 inch loaf pans
I’d like to make this, as I have 12 yolks leftover from an angel food cake recipe. But, I have some questions. What speed should the yolks be beaten at (low, medium low, medium, medium high, high)? And, when using a stand mixer, should I use the beater or whip attachment? Thank you!
I used the whip attachment on med-low to beat the egg yolks
I have this in the oven right now! I only had 8 yolks so I added 2 eggs and used maple flavoring instead of lemon. I was surprised there was no butter or oil, but I assume the fat comes from the yolks. Thanks for the recipe, I’m sure we will enjoy it!
The cake erupted from the Bundt pan while cooking. It looked like a volcano spewing from the center of the pan and falling into the oven and onto the heating element! I put a sheet pan on the rack below the cake it to catch the fallout and was able to salvage the cake. The oven on the other hand….I used cake flour (Softasilk). Would that have caused the “eruption”?
Oh noooooo! Yes the flour makes a difference. Also if the bundt pan was too small. The 10 inch tube pan that I use is larger than most traditional bundt pans.
I made this cake and it is in the oven as we speak…actually erupting all over the pan I set underneath it! Thank you for your comment or I would not have thought to put that pan under it. I followed the directions EXACTLY and even used my largest bundt pan. I am an experienced 👩🍳 and brought my whipped yolks to very thick…as that would be the method for a cake like this.
Do you have to adjust the oven racks to the lowest position, like Angel Food cake?
I did not
The recipe was a great find to make alongside the 12 egg white angel food cake. I did not have lemon extract, so substituted orange extract. The cake has a wonderful hint of dreamsicle to it. It does have a crispy top, but on the whole it’s a very good cake.
I found a recipe for cookies that calls for 8 cooked egg yolks a few years ago. I’ve made it a couple of times, and they are delicious and very rich. Lots of butter, though:
https://www.allrecipes.com/recipe/184371/swedish-butter-cookies/
Thank you, Phil, I will check out that cookie recipe
I made this today during a blizzard, because I had a dozen leftover egg yolks from another recipe that I didn’t want to waste. I only had a 9″ bundt pan, but it worked okay, and I pulled it out of the oven at 40 minutes, and any longer and it would’ve been too dry. But it is delicious!! My roommates and I love it! I used lemon juice from a lemon instead of lemon extract, and I used around 3 tsp of the lemon juice, and it was good. I also made a glaze with confectioner’s sugar and the juice of the rest of the lemon, as well as some vanilla and water, and drizzled it over the top of the cake after it was cooled. And I also made candied lemon peel as a garnish for the top (I’ve been watching Great British Baking Show a lot, and Mary Berry made it so I wanted to give it a try with the rest of the lemon!) and it is fancy and delicious! Love this cake!
The GBBS is the exact reason I’m looking for cake recipes as well! Those technical challenges have inspired me!