Vancouver Information and Newspaper

There’s Olympic gold in them thar hills.

Scrumptious morsels of cheddar shortbread are what Mark Pollard is churning out by the thousands in his kitchen deep in the rolling hills of Northumberland County.

In a few days, athletes, dignitaries and maybe even the prime minister will savour the buttery goodness of Pollard’s pride and joy at the Winter Games in Vancouver.

“It’s a great honour,” beams the man known as the Big Cheese for his signature snack. “We were told they wanted the best of Ontario.”

“They” are the Ontario Olympic Secretariat, whose members were so impressed with the golden gems they sampled that they chose them as one of 10 Canadian products to be featured at tastings, receptions and sales booths in the Ontario pavilion.

“It’s amazing how badly they want them. It’s cool,” says Pollard, whose Sprucewood Handmade Cookie Co. in the village of Warkworth, 90 minutes northeast of Toronto, began the marathon production a month ago.

He beefed up staff from six to nine, more than doubled the number of shifts and fired up the ovens for 10 hours a day. Then he upped his orders of butter and aged cheddar from local suppliers Stirling Creamery and Maple Dale cheese.

Now they’re turning out 40,000 all-natural cookies a day, each one rolled, cut, placed on parchment to bake for exactly 16 minutes, and packaged by hand.