Pound Cake - cooking recipe

Ingredients

1 lb butter, softened
3 cups sugar
6 eggs
4 cups flour
1 tablespoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup milk
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
butter, for greasing the pan
flour, for dusting the pan

Preparation

Preheat the oven to 350.
Butter and flour the bottom and sides of a 10-inch tube pan or a bundt pan.
In a large bowl, cream together the butter and sugar until they are light and fluffy.
Add eggs, one at a time, beating well after each. Set aside.
Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt in a separate bowl.
Mix the milk together with the vanilla in another separate bowl.
Add the flour mixture and milk mixture to the creamed butter/sugar alternating dry and wet. Start and end with dry. Do not overmix. Mix by hand, just enough to blend.
Spread the batter into the prepared pan. Bake 50 to 60 minutes, or until a sharp knife inserted all the way down comes out clean. Allow to cool in the pan for 10 minutes, then turn it out onto a plate.
Allow to cool completely before slicing. If desired, dust with sifted powdered sugar, or drizzel with a glaze made from powdered sugar and milk or water.
Variations follow. The above is the plain poundcake recipe. Below is lemon poundcake, blueberry poundcake, or mocha-swirl poundcake.
Lemon Poundcake: replace the vanilla above with lemon extract. Also add 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice and 1 tsp freshly grated lemon zest.
Blueberry poundcake: Make the Lemon Poundcake variation above and gently fold in 2 cups of fresh blueberries with the last addition of dry ingredients.
Mocha-Swirl poundcake: Replace milk in the standard recipe with 1 cup strong black coffee. After mixing up the batter, take about 1/3 of the batter and add 1 oz of melted, unsweetened chocolate (1 square). Spread the plain batter into the pan. Spoon the chocolate batter on top in clumps and then use a knife to swirl the dark and light batters together.