Grocery Store Sugar Cookies Ranked Best To Worst

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Be it an easy frosted sugar cookie recipe, an old fashioned sour cream sugar cookie recipe, or one of numerous additional preparations, there's a surprisingly diverse range of ways to enjoy the humble sugar cookie. Sometimes the simplicity of a thin, crispy, and unfrosted approach hits just right. Other times, a sugar cookie is merely a delivery system for generous helping of decadent frosting.

Sugar cookies, of course, are synonymous with the baked goods departments at major grocery stores. The type of soft, cake-like sugar cookie with brightly colored frosting in particular is a grocery store staple. In order to figure out just how the various sugar cookie options at some of the largest grocery stores stack up against one another, I picked up the widest selection of sugar cookies I could find from my local Walmart, Albertsons, Smith's (a Kroger brand), Target, Sprouts, Aldi, and Costco stores. After tasting each of them, I landed on the following ranking of grocery store sugar cookies in order from best to worst.

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The baseline grocery store sugar cookie is soft, frosted, and sold in a plastic clamshell in a quantity of 10. However, there are plenty of unique features that separate Costco from other grocery stores, including how it makes its house brand Kirkland Signature sugar cookies. One package contains 24 unfrosted cookies, each topped with a smattering of sprinkles. They're also smaller in size than standard grocery store fare. Mine came with seasonal fall sprinkles.

The high quality of Costco's sugar cookies is immediately apparent in their texture. Each cookie is thick, balancing an inherent softness with satisfying density. A lack of frosting, meanwhile, is no detriment to their flavor, because every bite is full of nearly excessive sugary sweetness. The sprinkles on top aren't strictly necessary, but they contribute a textural contrast that adds to the experience. Thanks to a best-in-class consistency and an unexpectedly bold flavor, Costco's Kirkland Signature sugar cookies are almost closer to good yellow cake than typical cookies. Those qualities resulted in the single best sugar cookie I tasted from any grocery store.

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Given a lack of sugar cookies at my local Whole Foods and the absence of competing chains in the area, Sprouts ended up as the sole health-focused grocery store in this sugar cookie ranking. In the Sprouts bakery department are various desserts in relatively generic brown cardboard boxes bearing a Baked Fresh Daily label. While Sprouts sells other kinds of cookies, the Baked Fresh Daily option is, of course, the freshest. The box I purchased contained 12 sugar cookies.

Sprouts' approach to its fresh-baked sugar cookies is as simple as can be, lacking even the sprinkles of the Kirkland Signature Butter Sugar Cookies. That wasn't ultimately a bad thing, because my Sprouts cookies were texturally satisfying and packed with flavor. To the former point, a thin form factor helped emphasize a structural density that was supplemented by the crunch of prominent sugar crystals. The one strange thing about my Sprouts sugar cookies was that they tasted pretty noticeably like lemon — I didn't see a strict lemon flavor in their list of ingredients, but citric acid and/or "natural flavors" could have been responsible. In conjunction with that unexpected but not unwelcome lemon flavor was a burst of pure sugar. Sprouts' Baked Fresh Daily Sugar Cookies are simple but effective, hitting all the notes an unadorned sugar cookie should, with a bit of a non-standard lemon flavor as a nice bonus.

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In my ranking of 11 canned green beans from best to worst, Walmart's Great Value Cut Green Beans performed particularly poorly. My expectations for Walmart's Freshness Guaranteed Frosted Sugar Cookies, therefore, were low. Not only did Walmart's sugar cookies exceed my expectations, but they turned out to be the single best of the soft, frosted grocery store sugar cookies that I tasted.

What made my Freshness Guaranteed Frosted Sugar Cookies work more than any other single element was the quality of their frosting. With a mix of round and long sprinkles contributing to the experience, it tasted like frosting from a solid birthday cake. That said, the cookie component was a bit mealy, but not to the extent it was distracting. Excessively floury cookies was a problem across the board with this sugar cookie style, and Walmart's sugar cookies offended less in that department than the competition. At my local Walmart were a good five or six different sugar cookie varieties, each with its own frosting color — I went with blue since that's the color of Walmart's branding. While merely cosmetic, the variety on offer suggests that Walmart is confident in its sugar cookies, and that confidence, it turns out, is well-earned.

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Ethel's Baking Co. is a brand that specializes in gluten-free desserts. Among their offerings at my local Sprouts store was a box of six sugar cookies. As someone who has never adhered to a gluten-free diet, I was curious if I would find these worthwhile, dietary limitations aside. My answer, it turns out, wasn't a strict yes or no.

Lacking from my Ethel's Baking Co. Gluten Free Sugar Cookies was a satisfying quantity of sugar. Years ago, I followed a vegetarian diet, and was occasionally frustrated by vegetarian foods that doubled as health foods, when I would have preferred vegetarian junk food. I imagine some gluten-free eaters go through something similar. These cookies' flavor was closer to that of a sweetened biscuit than a regular dessert. That said, their texture was pretty much ideal, maintaining a high level of moisture for a satisfyingly dense consistency. With the addition of some added sweetness — anything from, say, honey to frosting — these cookies could truly shine, gluten-free or not. As is, they're flawed, but for the potential to excel, the Ethel's Baking Co. Gluten Free Sugar Cookies still land in the upper half of this ranking.

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One of the defining features of the Pepperidge Farm brand is its use of American city names in the branding of its classic circular cookies. I happened to grow up near Ojai, California, so I had a bit of preestablished fondness for Pepperidge Farm's Ojai Soft Baked Lemon Sugar Cookies. With that said, they didn't quite live up to my childhood memories of the city of Ojai, but I found them to be pretty solid cookies all the same.

Inverting my experience with the Ethel's Baking Co. Gluten Free Sugar Cookies, what brought down my Ojai cookies was their texture. Despite a thin form factor, my cookies were a little too bread-like. Prominent on first bite was the sort of lemon bar-esque flavor that should define a lemon sugar cookie. However, that lemony quality faded faster than it should have, becoming subsumed by the cookies' general bread-like quality. For delivering on their lemon sugar cookie branding to at least some extent, Pepperidge Farm's Ojai cookies are worth trying, but they don't quite live up to their full potential.

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Favorite Day Bakery is the house brand used for baked goods in the grocery sections of Target stores. While more standard Favorite Day Bakery sugar cookies were available at my local Target, I opted for its Hot Cocoa Frosted Sugar Cookies, since chocolate frosting was something unique to Target's sugar cookie selection.

My thoughts kind of ping ponged back and forth on the Favorite Day Bakery Hot Cocoa Frosted Sugar Cookies. I decided that I liked them in the end, but not enough to land them in the upper half of this list. My initially poor reaction was a product of the cookie component's dryness. I found that an otherwise pleasant sugar cookie flavor ended up subsumed by a pervasive floury consistency that created a sort of sticky paste in my mouth. Not great. But when I went back to reassess Target's Hot Cocoa Frosted Sugar Cookies after that initial taste, I found that smaller bites did a lot to mitigate their textural deficiency. Those smaller bites, rather, were defined by a bright, sugary flavor underscored by a hint of chocolate. While I didn't think these cookies fully delivered on the promise of their chocolate frosting, that little extra chocolate flavor was enough to give Target's sugar cookies the edge over similar products that lacked a unique element.

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Kroger stores use the Bakery Fresh house label for its house-made desserts in the bakery department. My Bakery Fresh Frosted Sugar Cookies came from a Smith's store — other names under the Kroger umbrella include Food 4 Less, Fred Meyer, Mariano's, and Ralphs, among others. On the whole, the Kroger sugar cookies are fine, committing no crimes but lacking a defining characteristic.

Texturally, my Bakery Fresh Frosted Sugar Cookies were moderately mealy, about equivalent to the Walmart frosted sugar cookies, and decidedly less so than my Target frosted sugar cookies. Similar to Walmart's product, their defining flavor was birthday cake frosting. However, that quality was a little muted. For doing what a standard grocery store sugar cookie should, it's safe to say there's nothing overtly disappointing about a Bakery Fresh Frosted Sugar Cookie. On a routine trip to Kroger, then, it might be worth picking up a package, but those in search of the best sugar cookies grocery stores have to offer will likely want to look elsewhere.

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Benton's is a house brand at Aldi stores, responsible for at least a couple of Aldi brand products that are better than their original counterparts. Based on a quick Google search, Aldi produces frosted sugar cookies, but my local store had none in stock. Instead, I found hard sugar cookies packaged in a musical tin under the Benton's brand.

First of all, if this were a ranking of musical packaging, there's no way my Benton's Sugar Cookies would land anywhere other than at the very bottom. Four songs were available, and I opted for "Frosty the Snowman." So off were both the tempo and pitch coming from my tin's music box, the song sounded like music that might play in a trailer for a movie about a snowman slasher. Do not, under any circumstances, purchase a Benton's Sugar Cookies in Music Tin for its musical component.

The flavor of each Benton's sugar cookies was basically identical to a plain animal cracker. The only substantial distinction was the presence of slightly crunchy sugar crystals on their outsides. After trying them, I'm not entirely sure the "sugar cookie" label was accurate — since the cookies were in Christmas-themed packaging, Aldi may have simply decided sugar cookies sounded more holiday-appropriate than quasi-animal crackers. There's no reason to seek out a musical tin of Benton's sugar cookies, but at the same time, they're small and snackable like animal crackers, as unexciting as they may be.

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For something a little more shelf stable from Sprouts stores' house brand, in the cookie aisle are large bags of Sprouts Classic Holiday Sugar Cookies. Whereas every other cookie on this list — save for the Benton's brand sugar cookies — falls into soft cookie territory, the Sprouts Holiday Sugar Cookies are hard and crunchy.

That difference in style was not why I found myself so averse to this product, however. Rather, to my palate, the Sprouts holiday cookies were practically savory, closer in character to a sugary pretzel than a proper cookie. Red and green sugar crystals were visible on each cookie's exterior, but those did nothing to move the needle. Simply put, expecting a sugar cookie and ending up with what I would barely even consider a dessert was such a disappointing experience, the Sprouts Classic Holiday Sugar Cookies wound up just one spot shy of this list's lowest entry.

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Kimberley's Bakeshoppe was the sole bakery dessert brand available at my local Albertsons and Vons stores. Kimberley's Bakeshoppe is not exclusive to stores under the Albertsons umbrella — Albertsons produces baked goods under the Overjoyed house brand. However, the latter was unavailable to me. Anyone likewise living either in Las Vegas or elsewhere with Albertsons that exclusively stock Kimberley's Bakeshoppe should simply shop elsewhere for their sugar cookie fix.

Like Target's Favorite Day Bakery Hot Cocoa Frosted Sugar Cookies, my Kimberley's Bakeshoppe cookies suffered from a pronouncedly mealy consistency. But whereas Target's cookies made up for that with a standout flavor, my Kimberley's Bakeshoppe cookies provided nothing more than just the subtlest hint of sugar. The end result was a powdery, pasty residue that lingered in my mouth, reminiscent of lightly sweetened bread. Possessing no positive qualities and creating an actively unpleasant textural experience, the Kimberley's Bakeshoppe Vanilla Frosted Soft Sugar Cookies wound up as the single worst of all the grocery store sugar cookies I tasted.

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I kicked off the process of ranking grocery store sugar cookies by researching sugar cookie options available to me at my local grocery stores in the outskirts of Las Vegas, Nevada. My initial plan was to pick up 10 items I had pre-selected at Albertsons, Smith's, Walmart, Target, and Sprouts stores. However, multiple products I had intended to include were unavailable, and sugar cookies from Costco and Aldi ended up making for suitable replacements. For a product to be eligible, it had to be branded as a sugar cookie — the definition of sugar cookie is somewhat loose, so I relied on each product's labelling. In the end, after scouring the bakery and cookie sections of each grocery store I visited, I ended up with a comprehensive selection of the range of sugar cookies available at my local grocery stores.

In one sitting, I tried each kind of sugar cookie, eating half of one cookie in most cases, and two whole cookies when they were smaller in size. I took notes as I tasted, occasionally returning to cookies I wanted to reassess. My final ranking is based entirely on my findings from this tasting and no prior experience with any of the included products.