Although receiving gifts is a big focal point of the holiday season, nothing compares to the feeling of giving back to those in need.

For the third straight holiday season, Biked Goods founder and Team Summit mountain biking coach Tyler Zipperer has organized a holiday baked goods fundraiser, which helps to give baked holiday treats to those in need within the Summit County and nearby communities.

Zipperer started the annual tradition shortly after he moved to the county three years ago. Its mission is to help feed those who cannot afford food or holiday treats.

“I found Smart Bellies when I first moved out here three years ago, and I wanted to do something for them to include in their holiday meal boxes,” Zipperer said. “Cool River Coffee House kind of caught wind of it, too, and offered to let me use their kitchen to help bake a bunch of baked goods.”

The inaugural event began with Zipperer hosting a fundraiser to help raise funds for the ingredients he would use for the holiday treats he made within the Cool River Coffee House kitchen. Additionally, Zipperer opened up the night of baking to volunteers in order to get some help from the local community.

“The baked goods are included in the Smart Bellies holiday meal boxes that go out to families and kids in the county over the holidays,” Zipperer said. “It is just a small, little piece in the bigger scheme of things. Smart Bellies is doing really great work with these meal boxes.”

Since hosting the first baked goods fundraiser three years ago, the event has steadily morphed and grown. This year, youth athletes on Team Summit’s mountain biking team traded their bike bibs for aprons, helping Zipperer with the baking process alongside a few adult volunteers on Wednesday, Dec. 13.

“To make that many baked goods, it is nice to have a commercial kitchen,” Zipperer said. “Diane (Burris) at Cool River Coffee House has been so awesome. She has also helped donate some ingredients from her place.”

With around 10 helpful hands, Zipperer — while juggling a four month old — guided his athletes through making several pans of cookie bars where the youth athletes got a choice of which mix-ins to put into the hefty and nourishing bars.

“It is essentially cookie dough in bar form, that way you can make them in sheet pans versus rolling 1,000 cookies,” Zipperer said. “We kind of had a base recipe of flour, rolled oats, whole wheat flour and then the fun part was the kids choosing their own mix-ins. There was granola in there, dried fruits, seeds, nuts.”

Overall the baking opportunity not only allowed the kids to interact with each other during the mountain biking offseason, but it also allowed them to feel fulfilled by doing something bigger than themselves within the community.

“I try to make a point to explain what we are doing and why we are doing it,” Zipperer said. “It is more than just biking. It is being involved and giving back to the community. A lot of us are fortunate, and not everyone is as lucky. I try to make that point and give them a goal of making ‘X’amount of bars.”

Zipperer and his youth athletes were able to hit their goal and successfully filled over 450 of Smart Bellies’ holiday meal boxes, which featured the cookie bars.

Smart Bellies’ own team of employees and volunteers helped to assemble the final product, featuring other food and the baked goods.The holiday boxes were distributed throughout the county and surrounding area on Friday, Dec. 15, right before the start of the holiday break.

Zipperer has the desire to continue to grow the impact of the event in the coming years by growing the number of volunteers that participate in the event or getting those who can’t attend in-person to make their own baked goods to add to the boxes.

To find out more about Biked Goods, visit BikedGoods.co. To learn more about the programs offered by Smart Bellies, visit SmartBellies.org. To donate money to help offset the cost of the ingredients for the baked goods, visit Zipperer’s fundraising page.

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