Ontario wheat cookies in space!

This past April, the iconic Canadian maple leaf cookies made headline around the world when Jeremy Hansen, Canadian astronaut who had also been raised on an Ontario farm, chose to bring them onboard the Artemis 2 mission. As his ‘taste of home’ he shared them with his fellow astronauts during the communications blackout as they flew around the far side of the moon.

These cookies are not only iconic with their maple leaf shape and flavour, but are made right here in Ontario, using Ontario soft red winter wheat. Before reaching the moon, the wheat had already completed a remarkable journey through Ontario’s value chain. It was likely planted in the fall of 2024, a record year for Ontario winter wheat plantings with close to 1.2 million acres put into the ground. From there, it would have been harvested in summer 2025, which proved to be a strong year for yields and even better quality.

Following harvest, the wheat flour would have travelled to a Toronto based bakery where the wheat flour would have been baked into crisp, golden, maple leaf-shaped cookies and married with pure maple syrup.

In fact, the distinctive quality of Ontario soft red winter wheat helps cookies like the maple cream cookies achieve their signature shape and fine details. While bread flour is often valued for high protein and strong gluten, cookie manufacturers are looking for the opposite characteristics. Ontario soft red winter wheat produces a lower-protein flour that allows cookies to bake with a crisp texture, controlled spread and sharp definition. These qualities help preserve the maple leaf’s decorative details and ensure each cookie consistently matches its partner when assembled into a sandwich cookie.

Ontario soft red winter wheat reached a height that no other wheat had before in 2026. As spring sunlight broke Ontario’s wheat crop out of winter dormancy, a small parcel of Ontario wheat travelled to a place the sun’s rays never touch – the far side of the moon. #YourFarmers work hard year-round to produce quality food for us to eat, here in Ontario and around the world. And now, food to be enjoyed in space.