Big Year for Beyond

This past weekend marked 13 years of Insomniac's Beyond Wonderland SoCal.
The Alice in Wonderland themed rave brought big names including, REZZ, The Chainsmokers, Zeds Dead, Madeon, Alesso and many many more (50+ artists a day to be not exactly exact) across 5 stages and 2 days of raves. The festivities also brought an estimated 93,000 ravers, or headliners as Insomnaic calls them, to N.O.S Center over the weekend. This made history as the biggest Beyond  at the venue which has hosted the event since it's inagruation in 2010!

Insomniac goes above and beyond (no pun intended) with lighting, decorating, activations and character actors at all of  their various themed events. Whether it's skyhigh skeletons at Escape, people dressed as the White Rabbit hopping around at Beyond, alien strippers at Countdown, all of the neon daisies on Daisy Lane at EDCLV or a huge blinking owl on the mainstage at EDCO, Insomnaic brings every event to life. Work usually has me too busy or leaves me too tired to experience fests' festivities, this time the closest I got was a photo op by some branded scrim en route to the bathroom, lol, and that was good enough for me.

Being a part of why other people have a good time is why I do what I do. That and I love music. This type of music isn't my cup of tea but it's somebody's.
 P.L.U.R, bro. 

While it was the 13th Beyond Socal, this Summer marks the 1st Beyond Wonderland Chicago!
Hold on to your rave butts Chi-town & get ready to boogie. On June 1st & 2nd Hunington Bank Pavilion will become Beyond Wonderland Chicago!  

Curiouser and curiouser?
Beyond Wonderland at The Gorge in Washington is on June 22nd & 23rd! 

Careful not to fall down any rabbit holes or K-holes out there. 

Gwen Stefani Cupcake

2012's Push and Shove is the last time No Doubt made us want to keep on dancing but Gwen Stefani has never really gone away. What with her solo career, a messy divorce with Gavin Rosedale, seven seasons as a judge on the singing competition reality TV show The Voice, marrying fellow judge from The Voice, Country music star Blake Sheldon and re-vamping her make-up line on top of being a boy-mom of three and a Las Vegas residency or two sprinkled in over the years, the 54 year old rockstress has kept herself busy climbing to the top. 

Gwen Stefani cupcake @ Bubba Sweets 

In 2022, more or less a year after marrying Blake Shelton, Gwen played shows with her new hubby including a country star studded event at the infamously famous country venue, The Grand Ole Opry House in Nashville Tennesse. That's a big feat for a SKA-rock queen from OC.

A few weeks later in November, Stefani performed at the 37th Annual Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Industion Ceremony. Shortly after that it would seem that the platnium blonde fashionista was heading back towards her roots, playing Waterfront Music Festival in San Diego the weekend of November 18th, 2022. She hit a littler closer to home when she played the Beach Life Festival at Redono Beach last May but the closest we've seen Gwen Stefani get to her Orange County SKA, Punk roots
is when she headlined Staurday night at Cali Vibes on February 17th, 2024 in Long Beach. 

The weekend before Gwen's Long Beach apperance I remembered that a cupcake place not too far away in Huntington Beach has a Gwen Stefani cupcake. When I hopped on their website and saw that the No Doubt front woman inspired treat was served on Friday, Saturday and Sunday I was on the road before I knew it. Is there more appropriate subject to write about than a rockstar themed cupcake on a blog that reviews music and cupcakes?
I wasn't going to let this opportunity pass me by! 

There was no line at Bubba Sweets when I arrived and there they were, their Gwen Stefani cupcakes! The girl who helped me was very sweet and had no idea that that the cupcake name sake was going to be playing a music festival in Long Beach the following weekend. 

Rather than waiting to have cupcakewith my morning cup of coffee or save it for the next night I told myself to eat it that night and I am so happy that I did because it wouldn't have had it's fresh yumminess if I had waited. The cake was so buttery and so moist and so lemony it was basically a lemon pound cake but more buttery. The lemon was as fragrant as it was flavorful and the frosting was the thickest, creamiest, blueberriest frosting I've ever tried. 

Gwen Stefani cupcake from Bubba Sweets 
photo by Nikki DeMartini

Like Gwen, this cupcake is astheticly pleasing. There's no doubt about it, this cupcake wants your attention and with it's purple frosting adorded with a yellow button of lemony goodness and a rim of matching purple, pink, yellow and white srpinkles it gets your attention. No matter what look Gwen is rocking we can always count on her outfit to be unique with have a pop of color, something unexpected and fun accessories. Sometimes she looks so good you think to yourself, "she's going to actually perform?"and this cupcake is almost too cute to eat...almost. While blueberry lemon is a unique pairing for a cupcake it's not totally unheard of. 

When cupcakes have a lot going on the quality of how the cupcake tastes tends to go down. It could be that there's  a lot of flare but no flavor or way it's overly sugary or the frosting hits but the cake misses.
Not this time. 

As stated above the frosting was the thickest, creamiest, blueberriest frosting ever. It is in fact blueberry buttercream frosting and there is real blueberries mixed in it! You can taste it and see it, not just the light purple hue but little slivers of blueberries, too. Though flavorful the frosting wasn't as flavorful as the lemon cake and that's a good thing. Too much of a good thing is too much and the flavor ratio that Bubba Sweets found for their Gwen Stefani cupcake puts it at the top of the charts. 

Gwen Stefani cupcake from Bubba Sweets 
photo by Nikki DeMartini

Inside the lemon cake was a healthy portion of blueberry filling. Don't speak, I know what you're thinking...overload, right? Wrong! The blueberry filling wasn't very sweet at all according to my sweet tooth and really made the cupcake all the more scrumptious. Like Gwen going from rock band to solo career to Country starlette, this cupcake with it's blueberry filling goes into pie territory a little bit. If there was one thing I wanted more of from this cupcake it's more of the tangy lemon jelly that sat on top. 

Growing up, Gwen Stefani was one of my favorite rockstars in one of my favorite bands. TRagic Kindom was one of the first cassette tapes I owned. Seeing No Doubt at The Fillmore in SF right before Return to Saturn was released was one of the best concerts I've ever been to.
A lot of ladies my age grew up on No Doubt and idolized the band's front woman.
 And she dressed so cool. 

Gwen Stefani cupcake from Bubba Sweets 
photo by Nikki DeMartini

Last year after Tom DeLonge re-joined Blink 182 and made a surprise appearance at Coachella before impromptly headlining weekend 2 then launching on their own reunion tour, the rumor mill started turning with murmurs of a No Doubt reunion.
In early 2024 when the Coachella line-up announcement finally came so too did the announcement that No Doubt is scheduled to play.
Now, I may be walking on spiderwebs here but will there be a No Doubt reunion tour announcement post-Coachella? If so will Bubba Sweets create a No Doubt cucpake?
Both of those things happening would be hella good.

Gwen Stefani set-list Cali Vibes 2/17/2024 

1. Sweet Escape 

2. Sunday Morning 

3. Hey Baby 

4. It's My Life 

5. Bathwater 

6. Cool

7. Purple Irises (duet with Blake Shelton) 

8. Underneath It All 

9. Hella Good 

10. Blow Ya Mind 

11. Used To Love You 

12. Wind It Up 

13. Light My Fire (duet with Sean Paul) 

14. Rich Girl 

15. Luxurious 

16. True Babe 

17. What You Waiting For 

18. Don't Speak 

19. Spiderwebs 

20. Just A Girl 

21. Hollerback Girl