Cake. We can all agree that it’s awesome, correct? Good. While it’s undeniably easy to stop in your trendiest neighborhood bakery or pick up a boxed mix and a tub of frosting (and please just… don’t), making a cake from scratch is not nearly as intimidating as you might think. In fact, I’m fully confident that anyone with a mixer and a bundt pan can successfully bake this cake. Besides, starting from a recipe as great as this one, you don’t have to be an expert baker, you just have to have good notes from the real recipe experts - in this case, grandmothers.

This particular recipe came to me by way of my friend Dave. No slouch in the kitchen himself, Dave told me that the recipe not only came from his grandmother, but that he had baked it up once to give to the Dalai Lama. If that’s not a recipe legacy, I don’t know what is.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound butter, softened to room temperature
• 1 pound superfine sugar
• 6 eggs
• 3 cups sifted cake flour
• 1/2 teaspoon vanilla

Preheat the oven to 325. Cream the butter and sugar, then with mixer on drop in the eggs one at a time. Turn the mixer down and add the flour (not turning the mixer down could very well end up in you and your kitchen being covered in a fine dusting of flour). Add the vanilla and mix until everything is incorporated. Pour the batter into a greased bundt pan and bake for about 1 hour, 30 minutes, or until a knife/skewer/other long sharp implement inserted into the cake comes out clean. Let it cool in the pan for 5 minutes, then remove it from the pan to continue cooling, or just gobble it up while it’s still warm.