Ugly But Good Cake

A while back, before I started this blog, I made a really good Neiman Marcus Coffee Angel Food Cake.  As with all angel food cakes, I used a lot of egg whites and had a lot of egg yolks left over.  Not having a use for them immediately, I decided to freeze them.  I've heard you can freeze egg yolks and they keep fine, and I wanted to give this a try.

So this week I got inspired to whip something up using those yolks.  I searched allrecipes.com and also posed the question of what to do with 10 egg yolks to the good folks in the Jamie Oliver forums.  The people in the forum had wonderful ideas, but not exactly what I had in mind for this week.  So those recipes will all be kept and definitely put to use at a future time.  This week, I decided to make an Egg Yolk Sponge Cake, submitted to allrecipes.com by someone named Carol.

I love allrecipes for a few reasons.  First, there are loads and loads of recipes on the site and every time I'm looking for something new, I seem to find an interesting recipe there.  Second, I love that the recipes are submitted by real people cooking in regular kitchens.  This usually makes the recipes a touch more user friendly than what I find in some (not all) cookbooks.  Finally, I enjoy this site's rating system.  Recipe users can rate the recipe after making it and also provide comments and tips on how to enhance it.  I've gotten several great ideas from other cooks who have tried the dish before me and provided nice suggested alternatives to the original recipe.

So I decided to go with Carol's Egg Yolk Sponge Cake.  Here's the recipe, as seen on allrecipes.com.

Egg Yolk Sponge Cake
Makes one10-inch tube cake (14 servings)
Submitted by Carol

1 2/3 cups all-purpose flour
1 1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup egg yolks
1 egg
1 1/2 cups white sugar
1 tablespoon orange zest
1 tablespoon orange juice, strained
1/2 teaspoon lemon extract
3/4 cup boiling water

Directions:
Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (165 degrees C)  Sift together twice: flour, baking powder, and salt.  Pour back into sifter.  In a large mixing bowl beat egg yolks and whole eggs with an electric mixer until thick and lemon colored (about 5 minutes).  Gradually add sugar, beating after each addition. This should take about 10 minutes.

Fold in orange rind, orange juice, and lemon extract.  Sift dry ingredients into egg and sugar mixture and fold in. Do not stir or beat.  Add boiling water and fold in quickly, just until liquid is blended.  Pour batter into one ungreased 10-inch tube pan.

Bake at 325 degrees F (165 degrees C) for 60 to 65 minutes. Turn cake over in pan on a wire rack and let cake hang for 1 hour or until cool.  Loosen cake sides from pan with a spatula and shake from pan. Dust top lightly with confectioner's sugar or frost with Orange Butter Frosting.

Note:  I dusted with a little confectioner's sugar and then decided that the cake could use a little more oomph so I made a very light glaze to pour over the top.  The glaze was made using confectioner's sugar and orange juice, just enough of each to create a thin glaze consistency.

The cake came out very well, but mine stuck to the tube pan in places.  Since the recipe specifically called for an ungreased pan, I followed instructions but I was disappointed with the sticking.  Note to self:  Always grease this pan in future.  The cake has a fresh, natural citrus flavor.  One of my biggest pet peeves is any orange flavored food that tastes like St. Joseph's Children's Aspirin.  I hated the fake orange taste of St. Joseph's Children's Aspirin as a kid and to this day I'll deem certain foods "too Saint Joseph's" if the orange isn't natural tasting enough.  The cake's a little more dense than I would have predicted and it seems like the kind of cake that would suit an afternoon tea very well.  So it is yummy all around, but ugly due to the sticking.  I'd be really disappointed if I were making the cake for guests, but since it was just for us we can deal with a little stickage.