I Tried And Ranked 6 Holiday Cookies From Costco

If your family makes regular weekly trips to Costco like mine does, you'll no doubt notice that the warehouse breaks out the festive decorations and gifts in plenty of time for the holiday shopping season. In addition to the new toys and gadgets in the best new Costco finds, you'll find all kinds of sweets lining the aisles, drawing shoppers with all of their glitz and promises of sugary treats. The holiday season means cookies, and Costco's got plenty. But for all their decorative tins and seasonal sprinkles, the real question is: Which of these cookies are worth your time?

To answer that very question, I tried traditional cookies, ones highly styled to impress, and even cookies even the Grinch would love. My favorite cookies had great presentation, texture, and flavor. Truthfully, it's awfully difficult to make a cookie I wouldn't like, and I enjoyed each option in one respect or another, but in a situation like this, there can only be one winner. Let's see which Costco offering took the top spot.

Perhaps the most beautiful of the cookies I tried was the Kirkland Signature European cookies collection for $19.99. Unlike the Costco bakery items to come, these were not fresh, but they were beautifully packaged. Imagine a box of Valentine's Day chocolates but as cookies. Inside the tin, you'll find two shrink-wrapped trays of cookies with an explanation of each one on the backside of the tin's lid.

While the presentation of these was striking, the flavors of each cookie didn't quite deliver in the way that I hoped. These felt similar to the type of desserts given at a buffet on a cruise ship. The design of the individual bites might be exquisite, but the actual flavor of the treat isn't what you hope for. After sampling several, I found that some of the cookies were quite tasty while others were very plain. This really is a type of cookie collection that loves having its photo taken, but you might be left with leftovers by the end of the holiday season.

I had very high hopes for David's Butter Pecan Meltaways. This tin packed with two pounds of cookies was $11.99, and compared to the Butter Pecan Meltaways tin David's is selling on its website, this is an absolute steal. For the sake of comparison, the exact same tin of cookies on David's online store is going for $33.95, nearly triple the price of Costco's tin.

Like the other Costco cookie tins, these were packaged very nicely, shrink-wrapped within the tray to keep the theme in place and to prevent the cookies jostling about. Given the name, I was expecting these cookies to melt into my mouth, but they just don't. The flavor was pretty enjoyable, but the texture was far too crunchy to be considered anything other than drying. Like the butter cookies, I can imagine these being enjoyable with coffee or tea, but beyond that, the texture was just too disappointing.

It's always hard to escape the Grinch this time of year, and it's no different at Costco. If you're loving the Grinch madness and enjoy a great cookie jar, you might be especially interested in the Grinch cookie jar filled with Pirouline brand crème-filled rolled wafers in chocolate hazelnut and dark chocolate for $19.99. I was expecting these to be quite a bit longer than the cookies ended up being, and although they were tasty, they weren't as enjoyable as Pepperidge Farm's similar Pirouette cookies.

The Grinch cookie jar gets very high marks for presentation and being a festive and fun addition to your holiday decor, but the flavor of the cookies was a little on the forgettable side. That said, I can imagine purchasing the cookie jar and using it to store your Christmas cookie boxes stash. I may not finish all of the cookies in this jar, but it will become part of my annual holiday decorating.

You might be able to make classic butter cookies with three simple ingredients, but you could also purchase a four-pack of Kelsen Danish Butter Cookie tins for $18.99. Inside each tin, you'll find five different butter cookie looks. There's a basic round option, a piped circle, and three that have crunchy sugar on top in little rectangles, loops, and a pretzel shape.

The cookies have a great crunch similar to a shortbread and are the perfect accompaniment to coffee or tea. I was expecting a drying cookie, but they were reasonably moist all while being crunchy. I didn't enjoy these as I would a typical Christmas cookie drenched in flavor, but more as a sweet little bite with my morning coffee. I can imagine offering these as part of a morning coffee bar as a sweet, perfectly holiday addition. Not to mention, for $18.99, you get four large, generous tins, so there's plenty to share with co-workers or neighbors.

While the holiday cookie tray has fantastic options, for something decorated brightly for Christmas, check out the Kirkland Signature Christmas sugar cookie with sprinkles. For $8.99, you'll get a container of 24 sugar cookies boasting green and red festive sprinkles. The size of these cookies makes them perfect for small hands, so this is already a great choice if you've got kids. My son was especially fond of them, and they were the only ones of the bunch he was even interested in trying.

Initially, it might seem like these are just a smaller version of the speckly cookies from the large tray to come, but they're a much simpler cookie than the sandies. If you've had a simple sugar cookie with sprinkles, you'll recognize these, both in flavor and texture. They don't try to be anything fancy, and for that reason, many will enjoy them, even if I liked the cookie tray even better.

At the end of the day, you'll find the best cookies at Costco in the store's bakery area. Perhaps my favorite part of any Costco visit, the bakery always has quite the collection of sweets. It rotates year-round, offering limited-time treats that coordinate with the coming holidays, seasons, and celebrations. For instance, around Thanksgiving, you'll find plenty of pies (like my favorite store-bought pumpkin pie), and carrot bar cake appears in the spring around Easter. Around the winter holidays season, the cookie options see a special focus, perhaps most notably in the 60 cookie trays you'll find in the bakery. This Holiday Cookie Tray had five types of cookies: toffee sandies, butter pecan, red velvet, chocolate chunk, and coconut almond chunk.

Each of these cookies is tasty. They aren't necessarily fresh-from-the-oven good like the cookies your grandma makes this time of year, but they're about as good as you'll get from a grocery store bakery. These were some of the softest cookies I tried out of the six cookie offerings, and they were easily my favorites. With so many options, you'll find a nice variety of choices to satisfy all types of cookie cravings, even those longing for a simple chocolate chunk cookie. If you're looking for a great cookie tray to send to a holiday party at your child's school or one to help round out your cookie swap, these should be your pick. It's a fabulous get for $24.99.

To decide which of Costco's cookie offerings were my favorite, I considered presentation, flavor, and texture. Since we're talking about treats during the holiday season, the best cookies needed to look nice in appearance and general packaging of the cookies. I also wanted a cookie with a reasonable texture for that specific type of cookie. 

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, these cookies needed to be tasty and something you'll enjoy as a nice treat during the season, whether that's with friends, family, at your local cookie swap, or even alone with your morning coffee. My favorites were cookies that had attractive packaging, appropriate texture, and a great overall flavor.