If you know me, you’ll know that I adore baked goods, Pixar films, and german shepherds. At work today, a joyful man brought with him the most adorable german shepherd I’ve ever seen. Okay, so every german shepherd is the most adorable one I’ve ever seen, but still… This was one good lookin’ dog. I had to go and ask his owner all about him, of course!
While talking to the owner, I found out that the dog’s name was Guinness, he was 4 years old, and he weighed 110 pounds. He was a service dog for his owner because his owner had narcolepsy. Apparently, whenever his owner would have an narcolepsy attack, the dog can sense it 10-15 minutes before it happens and grab his arm with his mouth. That way, the owner knows it’s coming and can take his medicine to prevent it from happening. The dog keeps the owner’s medicine around his neck and is allowed to travel with him everywhere. I mean everywhere. Because of Guinness, the owner can do everything normally– drive, travel, be independent. He takes a trip every summer with Guinness, and this year they were traveling up the west coast (they live in the D.C. area).
Guinness is allowed to go everywhere his owner can.. like on an airplane! He doesn’t even sit in the cargo area– he sits right on a seat next to his owner. Best part is, he doesn’t have to buy a ticket for his dog! Just talking to the man, I could get a sense of how much love and adoration he had for his dog. He really admired Guinness! I mean, who wouldn’t? I made a comment about how large Guinness’ ears were, and the owner replied, “Those ears? Want to see how large they REALLY are?” and pulled out his wallet. Inside his wallet, he had a picture of Guinness from when he was 8 weeks old with ears that were half the size of his head. I just about died from cuteness overload. Apparently, Guinness’ ears stuck straight up when he was 7 weeks old and didn’t even flop. Talk about a perfect dog. Gahhhh. I’m dying for a german shepherd even more now.
Well this recipe has no relation to my story whatsoever, but I just had to share it with you. Dogs are such amazing creatures and have amazing abilities. I’m still in awe of how they could train a dog to catch things like that and alert the people when we can’t sense anything ourselves. The owner also told me that before he got the dog, he used to have episodes every month. Now, he hasn’t an episode in five months. His episodes are much farther apart because of Guinness, and it’s because of him that the owner can do everything he does.
Oops, I got sidetracked again. Back to the cupcakes. The oreo at the bottom was a nice surprise and the cake was nice and fluffy. The sour cream kept the cakes nice and moist, and went well with the bits of oreos. You can also mix in some crushed oreos into the frosting, if you want.. but I just opted to throw some on top.
- 1 package (18.25 oz) plain white cake mix
- 1 cup sour cream
- 1/2 cup vegetable oil
- 3 large eggs
- 1 tsp vanilla extract
- 30 Oreo cookies
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line muffin tin with 24 paper liners.
- Count out 12 Oreos and separate the top and bottom wafers. Make sure both sides have some of the icing on them. Place one wafer, icing side up, in the bottom of each liner. Set aside.
- Crush the remaining 18 oreos by putting them in a ziploc bag and using a rolling pin to roll over the bag.
- Place the cake mix, sour cream, vegetable oil, eggs, and vanilla in a large mixing bowl. Blend with an electric mixer on low speed for 30 seconds. Then, scrape down the sides of the bowl.
- Increase the mixer speed to medium and beat 1 1/2 minutes more. Measure out 1 1/2 cups of the crushed oreos and fold them into the batter until well incorporated. Set aside remaining crushed oreos for garnish.
- Fill each lined cup 3/4 of the way full with the batter and bake for 18-20 minutes.
