Pound cake

Christmas is less than three weeks away, so I'll be posting holiday favorites. Today's is pound cake--dense, delicious, can be eaten plain or with any number of toppings/sauces.

3 sticks melted butter
2 ½ cups sugar
1 ½ teaspoons vanilla
3 cups flour
8 eggs

Cream butter and sugar. Add eggs, beat until light and fluffy. Add flour ½ cup at a time while beating, add vanilla. Flour and grease bundt pan, pour in batter. Tap lightly to release air bubbles. Bake at 350 until done (when toothpick inserted in middle comes out clean).

With three sticks of butter and eight eggs, it's a heart attack on a plate, I know. But hey, it's the holidays. It's not like you're not gonna eat the pound cake.

Cost: 8 eggs x 17 cents each = $1.36, 3 sticks of butter = $3 (and that's REAL butter, not margarine), say 50 cents for the flour, sugar and vanilla. Just under $5 for the whole thing. As dense and rich as this is, that's a lot of pound cake.