Ladies and gentleman, start your watermelons: barbecue season has arrived.  Finally.  It took its sweet time and left us wallowing in puddles of rain and shivering under sweaters for many weeks, but it’s here now and I’m more than ready to let bygones be bygones.  So long as barbecue season agrees to stick around until, say, late September, you won’t hear another weather-related complaint out of me.  (What will I write about?)

As (good) luck would have it, we had a barbecue planned on the very first evening that barbecue deigned to grace us with its presence—last Thursday night.  After a very cold, damp, gray week, I was more than a little worried about the forecast for our barbecue.  Even still, we stocked our fridge with beer on Tuesday and stayed up way past our bedtime on Wednesday making baked beans and toasting bread cubes for panzanella.  At work on Thursday, I obsessively refreshed my zip code’s forecast on weather.com, where the chance for precipitation vacillated between 30 and 50 percent all day long.  By the time I left work, I had lost all hope that the sun would shine on us as we grilled.

But, you know what?  The sun did shine.  And it was hot.  And the baked beans were saucy and delicious as usual and this summer’s first panzanella was lovely.  Burgers were grilled to perfection by Kevin and everyone ate and drank and talked and laughed until the sun dipped out of sight.  After that, we lit a couple of candles, not ready to call it a night just yet.  For one thing, we hadn’t yet sliced into this cake: a peanut butter pound cake, baked into a bundt pan’s charming ring and anointed with a thick crown of chocolate glaze.

The recipes for the cake and glaze come from two of my favorite baking blogs: the cake from Bake or Break and the glaze from Joy the Baker.  As if you need any convincing when it comes to peanut butter and chocolate, the cake was wonderful: sturdy and studded with chocolate chips and gently peanuty.  And the glaze, oh, the glaze.  It took on body and tang from the addition of sour cream and depth from a splash of strong coffee.  Best of all, the cake got better as it sat.  I enjoyed my slice just fine at the end of our sun-drenched barbecue, but, by the next day, the flavors had developed and the texture had improved, growing denser and more moist.  It, like the barbecue, is sure to make repeat appearances all summer long.  I hope your barbecue season has gotten off to a good start too.

The recipe for Peanut Butter Pound Cake, at Bake or Break, is here.

The recipe for Mocha Sour Cream Glaze, at Joy the Baker, is here.