Brick Teen Hoping For Sweet Success This Weekend at Miss New Jersey Teen USA Pageant

For most kids, cupcakes are the things of birthday parties and PTA bake sales.

But for Gia Fontana, cupcakes represent far more than that: they represent hope. Hope wrapped up in yummy goodness, that is. Lemon raspberry, red velvet or even apple pie goodness.

Fontana, 18, is the founder of a local organization called Project Cupcake, where she bakes and sells gourmet cupcakes to raise money for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. The 2014 Brick Memorial High School graduate first was introduced to St. Jude and its mission as a kid. But as a teenager attending a cheerleading camp through the Universal Cheerleaders Association, she was exposed to it again through a program called “Teaming up with St. Jude.”

When her camp days were over, she wanted to do more to help families with children fighting cancer.

“I’ve always loved to bake, and this was a way for me to help,” she said. She experiments with all kinds of combinations, with her mother and her brother being assigned the tough job of taste-testing. “I try to avoid eating them so I can watch my weight,” she said with a laugh. Of the varieties she’s made, about 20 of them she deemed successes.

Her favorites?

“I make a lemon raspberry cupcake with homemade raspberry jam as the filling,” she said, “and a brownie batter cupcake with brownie batter in the middle.”

And just in time for fall, she’s created an apple pie cupcake, a spice cake filled with apple pie filling, topped with spice cake, a graham cracker crumb topping and drizzled with more apple pie filling.

Fontana makes her cupcakes and sells them at a variety of events, including craft fairs and flea markets, as well as private events. But she’s hoping to garner wider attention for her project through her participation this weekend in the Miss New Jersey Teen USA pageant.

She’s also hoping her boundless spirit will help her stand out among the 76 contestants at the pageant, which begins this afternoon with interviews at the Hilton Parsippany.

And make no mistake, it is boundless. If you define optimism as a ray of sunshine, Gia Fontana is a glowing rainbow.

“I never let anything take me down,” she said, with a sincerity that would seem forced coming from most people. There is nothing forced about Fontana, however. Not her cheerfulness. Not her determination. And most of all, not her spirit.

Her enthusiasm is so contagious that the cheerleading program at Brick Memorial created an award in her honor senior year, the Gia Fontana Spirit Award, to highlight the level of spirit she displayed. The team was a four-time national champion and won a UCA Leadership Award during Fontana’s years on the team.

“I won the Most Spirited every year,” when the team awards were announced, she said, and was stunned her senior year by the naming of the award, which will go to the cheerleader going forward who embodies “spirit at its best.”

“I was just being me,” she said. Whether it was a coach pushing her to get better because she’d made a mistake, a rough competition, or other challenge, she said she just kept smiling and working hard. “It’s just who I am.”

Hard work certainly is a mantra for this young woman. She was first approached a couple of years ago about pageant competition by Darlene Corrubia, a family friend who coaches pageant contestants. Fontana said she was hesitant at first, but after competing in the Miss New Jersey Teen USA pageant last year -- she placed in the top 15 -- she was hooked.

“It was so much fun,” she said. This is no “Toddlers & Tiaras” situation, however; Fontana, who is studing fashion merchandising at Brookdale Community College, pays for her own competition expenses, from entry fees to the hair and makeup and professional photo shoots to the gown she will wear for the competition this weekend. She estimates she’s spent $3,000 so far. She works as a waitress at Jake’s Crab House on the boardwalk in Point Pleasant Beach, taking double shifts as much as she can, and worked three jobs during the summer.

In addition to her baking skills, however, Fontana is focused on becoming a fashion designer, with a goal of designing gowns and wedding dresses in her great-grandmother’s name. Her great-grandmother owned a bridal design shop in Italy and brought it to New Jersey when she immigrated.

The Miss New Jersey Teen USA pageant begins today with interviews, with the preliminary competition Saturday and the finals on Sunday. The winner of the Miss New Jersey Teen USA will advance to the Miss Teen USA pageant, and receives scholarship opportunities as well as a prize package, but Fontana said she is most interested in the platform it will give her to promote Project Cupcake.

Regardless of what happens this weekend, it seems the teen already has found the sweet taste of success that comes from hard work.

To contact Fontana about her cupcakes to place orders or arrange for her to participate at a fundraiser, visit the Project Cupcake website here or by typing http://jerseygigirl.wix.com/projectcupcake into your web browser.