Sunshine Cake Recipe
This cake from Mary Meade’s Country Cookbook (an old Chicago-area classic) is the logical follow-up to angel food cake as it calls for about the same number of yolks: 12. And in fact it’s strikingly similar in both ingredients and process. The main difference is that it needs a little chemical leavening since egg yolk foam doesn’t rise nearly as high as egg white foam. It goes like this:
8.75 ounces (1 3/4 cups) cake flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
12 egg yolks, room temperature
6 ounces (3/4 cup) milk, room temperature
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract (or orange or almond)
7 ounces (1 cup) sugar
Preheat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Whisk together the cake flour, salt and baking powder. Put the yolks in the bowl of a mixer fitted with the whip. Whip the yolks until light and lemon-colored. Add the milk and extracts and whip until thick. Steadily add the sugar. Sift on the flour in three additions, gently folding it in each time. Scrape the batter into a buttered tube pan. Bake 30-40 minutes until, well…golden
Morning Joe, here too i’ll sub the normal flour and corn starch for the cake flour?
Yep! 😉
Hullo Joe!
Congrats on your fabulous blog!
Also, great recipe to recycle yolks! Quite similar to Portuguese Sponge Cake (Pão-de-ló).
A suggestion: next time you find yourself with zillions of yolks, try a Portuguese conventual sweet. If you loved Pastéis de Belém, you’ll love Pudim abade de priscos or toucinho do céu.
Thanks for yet another great post! =)
Fantastic! Thanks, Diogo!
– Joe
Will White Lily brand flour substitute for cake flour? I’d like to make an angel food cake and I have White Lily already.
Hey Ellen!
It’s not a perfect substitute, but it should work as long as it’s not the self-rising flour.
Let me know how it goes!
– Joe
Have I mentioned before how much I appreciate you putting weights as well as measurements on recipes? If I have, it bears repeating. Thanks!!
I will agree with Linda! I really appreciate that too! Thanks Joe!
Eva
My pleasure, Eva!
– Joe
My pleasure, Linda! 😉
– Joe
Hi! I am a long time follower of your blog from Goa, India. I have learnt so much from your tutorials I just wanted to say a big thank-you. If you ever published your blog as a book with the step-by-step photographs I would be the first to buy it!
Hello Ayesha!
Thank you so much for writing in! Someday I may try a cookbook…but photos are expensive in print! That’s the big advantage of a blog.
Please check back in should you ever have any questions about anything you find here! Cheers,
– Joe
Have you ever made a gold-and-silver cake? I confess I made it only because of the name, but it was delicious as well!
Hey Sherry!
I haven’t, nor do I really know what it is. Why is it called that?
– Joe
She made me have to go look that up! Looks fascinating. Subtle difference in the layers but pretty. How does it taste??
I see from my notes that the recipe I tried was from a book called Dishes and Recipes of the Old South, but I think it’s Victorian in nature. I read somewhere (I don’t remember where anymore) that it was a favorite of Queen Victoria.
The version I baked is essentially a gold cake and an angel food cake with different flavorings for each. The two batters are swirled together for a gold-and-silver look. Thanks for reminding me of this cake! I think I’ll bake it again this weekend.
Fascinating. I’ll have to try that one of these days!
Cheers,
– Joe
I’ll have to try that. Sounds terrific!
– Joe
I made these cakes over the weekend (half-recipes, in my mini angel cake pan). Sorry to say I overbaked the gold cake 🙁 It set much more quickly than expected, and I wasn’t paying attention. It still had good flavor (it’s a nice cake), and I’ll certainly try it again with more vigilance next time! The angel cake was very nice, good texture, not too sweet. Served with fruit, haven’t made the chocolate sauce yet, but I’m sure I will. Thank you!
Great news, Chana (for the most part). I haven’t done the gold cake yet but am looking forward to it. Maybe today!
– Joe
Hi Joe
Let me tell you our little story, once a week for lunch my 12 year’s old granddaughter is coming to my place and we chitchat while having lunch together and I always ask her what would you like next week for lunch and dessert and at least one a month it’s an angel cake, her favorite cake; and I always have 12 yolks ready for ice cream but this week I’ve try you gold cake with the chocolate sauce et the icing and of course got some left yolks and decide to make a small batch of hazelnuts ice cream to go with the gold ‘’sin’’. My grandson came last night for a short visit and left with the whole thing, the cake, chocolate sauce and ice cream. He called me this morning and asked me to marry him, he is 10 years old. We laughed and agreed of instead marry him I must live to 150 years old, I am 60 so can you imagine how many more cakes I will have to bake. My grandchildren and I are grateful to you, your recipes are parts of our dearest memories, thank you and keep sharing your passion with all of us. Merci beaucoup du Québec.
Louise
Louise, you made my day with this. I’ve been working too hard at my day job and have been completely exhausted the last two weeks. This reminded me why I keep this blog going. I could not be more pleased and proud. Thank you, thank you for this delightful note. I shall keep it and look at it on hard days!
Your friend,
– Joe
Love this recipe! Perfect with even just a simple lemon glaze.
Absolutely! My grandmother did that as well and I loved it. Was she speaking to you from the beyond?
Thanks for the reminder!
– Joe
Hi Joe. Carole’s Chatter is collecting cakes today. This is a nice one. I do hope you pop over and link in. This is the link . Cheers
Missed it! Dang, I was on vacation. I’ll have fun looking at the entries though!
Cheers,
– joe
Hi Joe! I made this cake yesterday — I thought I had cake flour, but it was self-rising cake flour, and I was short 2 tbsps!!! I said, what the heck…I used it anyway adding additional AP flour to make it the right quantity, omitted the baking powder and salt and it WORKED!
Woohoo! Nice improvisation, June! Thanks for getting back with me about it.
Cheers,
– Joe
Hi Joe!
Looks like a delicious cake. Btw, we have this kind of cake in Indonesia, and it’s very popular here, it is Lapis Surabaya Cake (three layers cake). It takes 10 egg yolks to make one layer (there are 3 layers, plain, chocolate, and plain), hahahaha. Actually it’s not the same but it’s similiar because we use butter instead of milk. The texture is fluffy and moist. I made this cake last week and have so many egg whites leftover, I think I will try to bake Angel Food Cake using your recipe… 🙂
Thanks Joe!
Midia
Thanks Midia!
Let me know how it goes, please!
– Joe
Hi Joe,
I’ve tried baking your angel food cake, it’s soooo flufffyyy…^^ but I reduce the sugar since I don’t like if it’s too sweet… Oh ya, if you want Lapis Surabaya recipe I will send the recipe to you by mail. It’s a nice cake, fluffy and moist.
Thanks! ^^
Midia