Florida Gulf Coast University

Why We’re Baking Our Little Hearts Out

Each week, we’re shining the spotlight on a bake sale team so that they can share their inspiration and ideas for the Tie-Dye Cupcake Bake-Off, a sweet movement to sponsor girls with She’s the First.  Join by signing up to host a fundraising bake sale during November 1-8 at shesthefirst.org/cupcakes!

Maisy on her STF360 trip to Starfish One by One in Guatemala

Hello Cupcake Warriors! My name is Maisy Page and I am a graduate student, the Founder/President of She’s the First*{FGCU}, STF Researcher, and leader of the FGCU Tie-Dye Cupcake Bake-Off team!

It’s amazing to watch the growth and progress of this cupcake campaign and hard to believe it was only a year ago that we read the blog posts about the first famous tie-dye cupcakes at Notre Dame!

Our very first attempt at baking the famous tie-dye cupcakes!

Our exec board for She’s the First*{FGCU} is spearheading our sale for November, and these ladies are awesome! Our VP, Emily Kahler, and our Secretary, Stephanie Heath, helped me bake our very first batch of tie-dye cupcakes for our very first STF*{FGCU} meeting! Our cupcakes ended up being not only adorable but delicious also. We made mini-cupcakes for the meeting because we thought that way people could get a bite-size taste of what is to come in November!

At FGCU, we’ve ran into some challenges about actually having our bake sale on campus due to the university’s contract with food vendors, but I feel like this just gave us the opportunity to be a little bit more creative with how we are going to plan, advertise, and get people interested in our bake sale. So, we’re not having a bake sale at all! That’s right, I said, we’re not having a bake sale at all. We are doing the true form of a bake-off! In order to abide with university regulations, we are turning our bake sale into a campus-wide event! We’re still working out the details, but our preliminary thoughts are to use one of the rooms in the student union for competing on-campus organizations to set up their very own cupcake booths. We will then charge admission for people to come to the event and prizes will be awarded for “most creative display,” “most creative cupcakes,” “best tasting cupcakes,” and then an overall winner. We think fostering a little bit of healthy competition amongst our university community is just the right kind of incentive to get people involved.

In the next month, we will be going to other organization’s meetings and chapters to promote the bake-off and get them signed up. I would be remissed if I didn’t mention the constant PR work that our faculty advisor, Dr. Sandra Pavelka, has been doing. Dr. Pavelka, or as we lovingly call her, “Dr. P,” has been behind me 150% since I decided to start She’s the First*{FGCU} and has been tirelessly recruiting people to join the organization and the bake-off.

Through the fun of enjoying the company of our friends while baking, to deciding which color neon sprinkles to use on the tops of our multi-colored bites of scrumptiousness, we haven’t forgot why we’re doing this. Our cupcakes are creating change. Our cupcakes can send a girl to school, and for this reason, we bake our little hearts out.