The Best & Worst Holiday Cookies From Costco

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Thanks in large part to viral Costco guys A.J. Befumo and Big Justice, Costco has become a cookie destination. For many, a mere mention of the Costco guys will evoke A.J.'s iconic "double chunk chocolate cookie" catchphrase. Costco's cookie selection extends beyond just that food court standout, however. Not only does Costco stock a solid range of cookies in its bakery department, but its year-end inventory in particular features a handful of cookie products available just for the holiday season.

I visited my nearest Costco and picked up the chain's Kirkland Signature store brand Christmas Sugar Cookies, a massive Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray, and a metal tin of Kirkland Signature European Cookies. While the holiday cookie section at my Costco — and this presumably applies to most Costcos — included a number of additional products, they were all from brands that are available elsewhere. Instead, I stuck to the Costco exclusives. After trying each distinct style of cookie available to me, I determined which are the absolute best Costco holiday cookies and which land among the store's worst offerings.

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When I ranked grocery store sugar cookies from best to worst for Mashed, Costco's Kirkland Signature Butter Sugar Cookies with Fall Sprinkles took the list's number-one spot. The holiday-time Kirkland Signature Christmas Sugar Cookies with Sprinkles are functionally identical to those list-topping fall sugar cookies, a mere alteration in sprinkle color contributing no functional difference.

Most importantly, the flavor of Costco's sugar cookies is as bold as can be for such a simple treat. Ample sugar and rich butter dominate, delivering on just about the Platonic ideal of how a sugar cookie should taste. Amplifying that effect is a dense consistency that's more akin to a cake than to a typical cookie. Even though each Christmas Sugar Cookie is on the thicker side, at no point did any of my bites become dry or unwieldy, thanks to that considerable density. 

Maybe the only category in which the Kirkland Signature holiday sugar cookies are subpar is their appearance — festive Christmas sprinkles hardly mask the fact that they're otherwise devoid of color or personality. But ultimately, that's okay, given how remarkably the Kirkland Signature Christmas Sugar Cookies punch above their weight class. As the single best sugar cookies from any grocery store, Costco's Kirkland Signature sugar cookies are well worth a purchase, Christmassy sprinkles or not.

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None of Costco's holiday cookies are bad, per se. Costco makes some good cookies and some great cookies, so the bar for a cookie to rank among Costco's best is high. There's nothing necessarily wrong with the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray's red velvet cookies, but for failing to rise above a merely adequate level of quality, they're firmly among Costco's lesser holiday-time cookie options.

An excellent red velvet cookie recipe balances a subtly chocolatey cookie base with white chocolate chips. Ideally, that results in a less flashy but perhaps more elegant take on a standard chocolate chip cookie. Rather than pull off tasteful chocolate elegance, I found the Holiday Cookie Tray's red velvet cookies to offer little more than a relatively nondescript sugary quality. The richness of the white chocolate chips came through, but only subtly, failing to color the experience to any significant extent. 

I did, however, find the Costco red velvet cookies texturally satisfying, deftly balancing softness and density just like the chocolate chunk cookies. With no alternatives available, I certainly wouldn't be disappointed with a Costco red velvet cookie, but with access to the entirety of the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray, any one of the four alternatives on offer makes for a preferable choice.

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The fact Costco labels its chocolate chip cookies — one of five distinct styles of cookie in the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray — as "chocolate chunk" seems intentionally evocative of the double chocolate chunk cookies from its food court. The similar name, it turns out, is not just cosmetic but appropriately indicative of what to expect from the Holiday Cookie Tray's chocolate chunk cookie.

A big part of what makes the food court's double chocolate chunk cookie so good is its high chocolate content. The pieces of chocolate are both more substantial and more indulgent than standard chocolate chips. The chocolate chunk cookie delivers that experience too, but simply in a smaller and slightly less bombastic form. Texturally, each chocolate chunk cookie balances a pleasant softness with a satisfyingly firm body, presenting an explosion of chocolate flavor in a pretty ideal package. 

Costco's chocolate chunk cookie landed first in the Mashed ranking of Costco bakery cookies from worst to best, and just as it was a standout then, it's a highlight of Costco's holiday cookie offerings. Even after trying its holiday-exclusive companions from the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray, the chocolate chunk cookie ended up as my single favorite of the bunch.

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Like the butter pecan cookies, the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray's toffee sandies are impossible to identify on sight — in fact, they appear to be sugar cookies, based on the plain white color, crystalline sugar topping, and addition of red and green sprinkles. For what it's worth, I enjoyed my toffee sandie cookies more than the red velvet cookies with which they're packaged. Nevertheless, I found them to land in the lower end of Costco's holiday cookie lineup.

The flavor of the Costco toffee sandie cookies is, at least initially, similar to that of a sugar cookie. The foremost characteristic that comes through upon first bite is a general sort of sweetness, lacking anything more specific than pure sugar. However, making that experience more distinctive is the sandy texture that gives this style of cookie its name. Each bite of my toffee sandie exploded into a dry powder within moments. It was certainly unique, but not something I valued, especially when the other Costco cookies excelled in the texture department. 

Toffee was somewhat apparent in the cookie's aftertaste, accented by a subtle saltiness. Altogether, finding its sand-like character a net neutral and its toffee flavor lacking, I would describe the toffee sandie as not necessarily bad, but not something I would seek out either.

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The butter pecan cookies are one of two cookie types in the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray that stand out for being effectively impossible to identify on sight alone. Anyone with access to a Costco Holiday Cookie Tray and no key denoting which cookies are which should know that the cookies topped with powdered sugar — an addition not necessarily standard in a butter pecan cookies recipe — are butter pecan flavored.

Pecan defines the butter pecan cookies first and foremost. Butter comes through too, but it's decidedly secondary to that nutty character. Plus, as is the case for most of Costco's holiday cookies, they're satisfyingly dense. That texture is complicated by some crunch from the pecan pieces, hidden underneath the powdered sugar coating, but present nevertheless. 

Perhaps because they're comprised in part of plain nuts, I found these to be the least cloyingly sweet of every option on the Holiday Cookie Tray. Altogether, the butter pecan cookies stand out for delivering on the promise of their name, as well as for how their pecan-forward, less sugar-dominant flavor contrasts with the rest of the Cookie Tray.

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During the holidays, Costco sells gift or holiday party-ready tins of Kirkland Signature European Cookies with Belgian Chocolate. Each contains an assortment of 15 different kinds of bite-sized cookies. I assessed the product as a whole because all of the included styles of cookie follow a standard formula, combining mild European chocolate with a crispy biscuit element.

Sweet — but not overly sweet — cocoa-forward chocolate with a subtly flavored biscuit makes for a solid cookie, to be clear. But basically every style of cookie in my Kirkland Signature European Cookie tin was merely solid and nothing more. Belgian chocolate is famously delicious, and the quality of the chocolate in each European cookie is indeed high. There's just not much else going on, making it hard to feel anything greater than contentment. Altogether, I found that these cookies were almost good, but since they lack excitement and land in merely satisfactory territory, the Kirkland Signature European Cookies with Belgian Chocolate tin is hard to recommend outright.

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In the looks department, the coconut almond cookie is the star of the Kirkland Signature Holiday Cookie Tray. Ample chunks of chocolate, almond slivers, and a cragginess from the toasted coconut are on display. A lot is going on visually, but all of those components seem like they should mesh well. All in all, those flavors do indeed combine into a whole that's greater than the sum of its parts, albeit with a conspicuous lack of almond. 

Texturally, the toasted coconut contributes a chewiness, ultimately accenting the density that's characteristic of Costco's holiday cookies. Coconut is likewise at the forefront of the cookies' flavor, accompanied by plenty of chocolate. Knowing that my coconut almond cookies were supposed to contain nuts, I was able to identify a subtle almond accent, but if I didn't know to look for it, then I probably wouldn't have realized it was there. Low in almond though they may be, a chocolate coconut cookie is still pretty darn good, and the Holiday Cookie Tray's chocolate almond cookies rank among Costco's very best holiday cookie offerings.

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To determine my selection of Costco holiday cookies, I first checked Costco's online inventory and identified every Costco-exclusive holiday cookie product available to me. Then I picked up each item from my local Costco in one trip.

On the evening that I purchased my Costco cookies, I tried half of a sugar cookie, half of each cookie in the Holiday Cookie Tray, and two-thirds of the European Cookies With Belgian Chocolate in one sitting. I took notes all the while, basing my best and worst categorizations largely on how the cookies stacked up against one another during the tasting session. Over the course of the next few days, I had more of each kind of cookie and tried the remaining third of the European Cookies, helping to solidify my opinions. My assessments are based entirely on this series of events and not on prior experience with any of these holiday cookie products.