Spiced Pumpkin Pull-Apart Cupcake Cake {Recipe Time}

It’s that time of year again! Time for pumpkin spice everything!!! Woohoo!!

One of our top favorite goodies to make, besides the classic pumpkin bread, are Spiced Pumpkin Cupcakes. I used to make them topped with a Maple Butter Frosting until Rosie requested a Spiced Pumpkin Cake with a Brown Sugar Frosting for her birthday some years ago. {The link takes you to a post from 2010 on my first blog.} Rosie has requested it a couple times since and I’ve started making it for other occasions.

Recently, my dad asked me to bake something for my sister’s homecoming. Actually, what he asked for was “something with that really good maple frosting on it.” The “really good maple frosting” is actually a brown sugar frosting that tastes almost exactly like my maternal grandmother’s maple fudge. ::swoon:: That stuff is so addictive!

A Guy and A Grill — Premiere Post!

Hey Y’all! Tanya here. I have someone I want you to meet. Everyone, meet Nate, aka ‘hubby’. I’m going to be writing a little series following my hubby and his adventures into the wonderful world of grilling. Who’s excited? I know I am! (It may have something to do with all the yummy food I know I’m going to get to eat…that I don’t have to cook! 😉 )

For Father’s Day this year, Nate’s parents got him a charcoal grill. He was very excited about it and was ready to get started. (If the weather had cooperated I’m pretty sure we would have grilled out that night.) Since this was the first time that this guy had been in charge of planning what to grill and then been in charge of grilling it too, he decided to start simple. 

Nate picked up a 3-pack of chicken breasts from the store. (There were only 3 of us for dinner because Freckles was at a sleepover party.) When we got back from the store, we noticed how very large the chicken breasts were. Nate cut them in half, that way he felt more confident in getting them cooked through.

Nate divided the chicken in half and placed the breasts in 2 gallon-sized ziplock bags. To one bag he added some Rodeo Barbecue seasoning and olive oil.

He closed up the bag and smooshed it all around so that the chicken was fairly evenly coated with the oil and seasonings. 

For the second bag, Nate added in a couple teaspoons of lemon pepper seasoning, a touch of salt, some garlic powder, some onion powder, and olive oil. Again, he closed up the bag and smooshed everything around so that the chicken was fairly evenly coated. 

The two bags went into the fridge and Nate went out back to get the grill going.

Once the grill was good and hot, I brought out the chicken and he laid it all out on the grill.

Looks good, doesn’t it?

When the chicken was getting close to being done, about 10 -15 minutes later (there wasn’t as much charcoal in there as there should have been so it took longer to cook, this will be remembered next time 🙂 ), I went in and cut up some peppers to grill. Another lesson to file away for next time: DON’T cut the peppers BEFORE grilling because cut peppers are harder to turn and therefore can fall between the grates. Keep the peppers whole!

Nate and I thought the lemon pepper chicken was super tasty, but the real test was Ladybug.

She loved it! We couldn’t believe it! She cleared her plate in no time! We are going to need to remember this one. 🙂

The Rodeo Barbecue Rub was good…once we added salt. We didn’t think to look at the ingredients list, we just assumed it had salt. It didn’t. It needs it though, so next time we’ll remember that. 🙂