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

Total time
Author: adapted from Allrecipes
Recipe type: Dessert
Cuisine: American
- 1¾ cups cake flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ¼ teaspoon salt
- ¾ cup cold water
- 3 eggs, separated into yolks and whites
- 1½ cups sugar
- 1 teaspoon vanilla extract
- 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.
Serving size: 1 slice Calories: 127 Fat: 1.1g Saturated fat: .3g Carbohydrates: 28.7g Sugar: 25.1g Sodium: 66mg Fiber: .2g Protein: 1.8g
3.5.3229