One of my favorite naturally dairy-free desserts is angel food cake. It’s tender, a little airy, delightfully sweet, and a perfect way to showcase fresh fruit. It’s best when home baked, but it requires a whole carton of eggs, and leaves you with a dozen yolks to use up. This angel food cake with yolks is a great solution. It uses just three whole eggs, yolks and all. It’s light and fluffy, like typical angel food cake, and bakes up almost as tall.
Angel Food Cake with Yolks – the Recipe uses Just 3 Whole Eggs!
The recipe is ever-so-slightly adapted from Allrecipes, and is dubbed “Gone with the Wind Cake.” It’s pretty straight forward, but I do have some tips and notes to help ensure the best results.
- Mixer: Believe it or not, you can make this angel food cake with yolks without a mixer, but I don’t recommend it unless you are looking for a serious arm workout. It works well with a hand mixer, but if you have a stand mixer, this is a great time to pull it out! The extended whipping of both the yolks and the white separately is what helps to give this cake some extra lift.
- Cake Flour: This type of flour is lighter and lower protein than all-purpose flour, which helps to avoid cake that is too chewy. If you don’t have any cake flour on hand, you can substitute 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour + 1/4 cup cornstarch.
- Cream of Tartar: Unlike most angel food cake recipes, this one doesn’t require any cream of tartar. But if you are concerned about the stability of the egg whites, you can add a 1/4 teaspoon cream of tartar before whipping.
- Alternate Cake Pans: You can baked this angel food cake with yolks in other types of pans, like loaf pans. Just make sure to fill the pan(s) only halfway, to allow the cake room to rise. Also, keep an eye on the cake as it might need more or less baking time, depending on the pan. If using a pan with a large base, like a cake pan, cut a piece of parchment paper to fit the bottom before pouring in the batter.
- Serving: This angel food cake with yolks is delicious with fresh berries and powdered sugar, dairy-free lemon curd, or dairy-free whipped cream. It’s also a great base for strawberry shortcake!
Special Diet Notes: Angel Food Cake with Yolks
By ingredients, this recipe is dairy-free / non-dairy, nut-free, peanut-free, soy-free, and vegetarian.
Angel Food Cake with Yolks
This cake comes out so light and fluffy, and is quite close to a classic angel food cake. But it uses just 3 eggs, and you don't have to waste the yolks!
Ingredients
Method
- Preheat your oven to 350°F.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, baking powder, and salt.
- Add the cold water and egg yolks to a mixing bowl, and beat until the mixture makes 1 quart, at least 10 minutes.
- Slowly add the sugar and vanilla to the egg yolk mixture, beating for at least 7 minutes.
- Fold the flour mixture into the egg yolk mixture.
- In a clean mixing bowl, beat the egg whites until stiff peaks form.
- Fold the egg whites smoothly into the egg yolk mixture.
- Pour the batter into an ungreased 9- or 10-inch tube pan.
- Bake the cake for 50 minutes.
- Turn the pan upside down to cool for 1 hour.
- Loosen the sides of the cake and gently remove it from pan.
Nutrition
Notes
Credit: This recipe is adapted from Allrecipes.
Tried this recipe?
Let us know how it was!
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8 Comments
It’s too bad that I can’t add a photo. I’m an American and made this for my new French family and they really liked it. They want me to try it again with less sugar, which I will, but the first time with this recipe turned out pretty good! I had to pay extra to get the special angel food cake pan here but it’s definitely worth it because this recipe gets me 80% there without the waste of the egg yolks. I don’t think it’s *that* similar to angel food cake made with just egg whites but I appreciate the zero waste effort and it’s very light and tasty.
So glad you enjoyed it Diane, and thank you for the feedback!
I had an overabundance of eggs and needed to make some recipes with them. I found this recipe that had no dairy and made it gluten free when I used gf flour. It turned out wonderful, it actually is better tasting then regular angel food cake with just whites. I like how the cake feels more substantial when you are eating it without losing any of the taste you expect. I added another egg to the recipe, just because I had so many and then made a lemon pie filling, that took 5 more eggs, and spread that over the top and added some spray whipped cream. What a hit for everyone. AND I used 9 eggs from my 100 eggs and counting hens. Hahaha
That’s a lot of eggs! Glad it worked out so well for you Colleen, and thank you for sharing your versions.
I followed the recipe to the “T” and it fell about 25 minutes into the baking. Any helpful suggestions as to what I may have done wrong. I may not have beat the egg yolks and water for the full ten minutes, but it looked full and creamy. The egg whites were definitely stiff. I used cake flour.
I’m so sorry, I missed this comment from before Devaney! Just in case anyone else has this problem, I did some researching. I’ve never had an angel food cake fall while baking, so I can’t say from personal experience. It is essential to beat the egg yolks for at least 10 minutes. They should fluff up to a quart (4 cups) in volume. That could be the problem. Also, cakes like this can collapse if your oven is too hot. If it’s too hot, it will cook the outside before the delicate inside has time to cook / set up, causing it to collapse.
This made a beautiful, sweet, light cake in a Bundt pan. I love that I was able to use the egg yolks too, and they even whipped up bigger than the whites. I baked at 325 because my convection oven runs hot and I pulled it out at 40 minutes, and probably could have sooner. I added 1 tsp. almond extract and only 1/2 tsp vanilla extract because I topped it with a cherry compote. I wish I could add a picture!
I’m so glad you enjoyed the recipe Ana and thank you for your feedback!