5 Costco Baked Goods To Buy And 4 To Skip

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The holidays are just around the corner. Between Thanksgiving and Christmas, you'll have Friendsgivings, work parties, school functions, and every other conceivable event that may require you to bring a baked good. Sometimes, it's a bit too much, which is why there's absolutely no shame in going the store-bought route instead of firing up the oven at home.

Of course, just because you're buying your baked goods doesn't mean finding the right ones is easy. Even within a single store, the options can be overwhelming, and nowhere does that seem more true than at Costco. The big box retailer is known for massive portions, and the bakery section is no different. Just about anything you can bake, Costco offers, from cakes to bagels, bread to cookies; there's something for every occasion. To help eliminate some of the indecision that may arise when you pull up to the Costco bakery, I tried nine different items to determine which are must-buys and which can be left behind.

Prices are as of the date of publication and may vary based on region.

Costco is a godsend if you're hosting a large group for brunch. There are a handful of breakfast-centric items on this list, but first and foremost are the bagels. I snagged a bag of the plain bagels, but Costco has several other flavors, including Parmesan Cheese and the new Pretzel Bagels.

An 8-pack of Plain Bagels retails for $5.66, an unsurprisingly great value given the store. True to form, the bagels are also quite large, making them worthy of a full meal on their own. While they don't come pre-sliced, I prefer to buy bagels whole as it helps keep them fresh. Each bagel is soft, chewy, and toasts up perfectly. 

If bagels are the main focus of your meal, there's no need to overthink things. Costco bagels are great, even if they don't come from a shop focused entirely on them. This is the perfect, no-stress addition to any breakfast and a definite freezer staple.

Because our relationship is built on trust, I'm going to come right out and say the "skips" on this list aren't hard passes, but more likely items you can survive without. Frankly, Costco doesn't make many bad products, and the Buttermilk Biscuits are one such example.

These things are huge. I honestly don't think I've ever seen a biscuit this large, let alone ten of them for $7.93. I'll jump into the review in a moment, but the reason the biscuits landed in my skip pile is that they're one of the few baked goods I purchased that came with cooking instructions and the only one that I think really needs to be cooked to be properly enjoyed.

A cold biscuit is, in my opinion, a sad biscuit, and while Costco's Buttermilk Biscuits are serviceable at room temperature, they're worlds better when warmed up. You can toss them in the oven or do what I did and zap each one in the microwave for about 30 seconds. The result is a steaming, fluffy, buttery biscuit roughly the size of a baseball. These are really good biscuits, but if they need to be warm to really enjoy them, there are more convenient options in the Costco bakery.

France has delivered a lot of wonderful things to the United States — looking at you, Lady Liberty — but the best cultural exchange may have been the croissant. Almost impossibly airy, flaky, and absurdly buttery, the croissant is a hugely versatile pastry. It can go sweet, it can go savory, or you can just munch on one as a snack.

A 12-pack of Costco Croissants is just $6.80. For comparison, my local Target has an 8-pack of Pillsbury Original Crescent Rolls for $3.39. Don't get me wrong, I love those fresh-baked little bundles of joy, but a single Costco croissant is equivalent to multiple of the smaller home-baked ones. The value is unbeatable, and the flavor is close behind. These croissants are everything you could hope for, and, thanks to their size, you can really get creative with them. Slice one in half and make a sandwich or, as I did, take 8 and put them into a fantastic French toast bake. It's culinary cultural inception and a great way to use a very tasty baked good.

Costco's muffins have a long and surprisingly winding history filled with recipe and size changes that bordered on national scandals. Thankfully, it seems that the muffins have once again found their sweet spot as some of the better options from the Costco bakery. Of course, this is a skip, though, so while I enjoy the Vanilla Chocolate Chip Muffins (which retail for $7.93 for an 8-count package), you can do better.

Costco has a number of different muffin flavors. Blueberry, Vanilla Chocolate Chip, and Double Chocolate are the standard options, but seasonal and rotating offerings include everything from Blueberry Creme to Pumpkin Streusel. I've reviewed Costco's Double Chocolate Muffins before and they're fantastic; rich, filled with chocolate, and riding that fine line between a breakfast pastry and a dessert.

The Vanilla Chocolate Chip Muffins are plenty tasty in their own right. Each one is remarkably soft and spongy, with a sweetness that makes it taste like a supersized Little Debbie treat. The chocolate chips are large, but not super evenly distributed. These are perfectly serviceable muffins you're almost guaranteed to enjoy, but Costco has better muffins, so these are an easy skip.

Like the muffin selection, Costco makes a solid variety of cookies. The Triple Cookie Pack contains eight each of the Chocolate Chunk, Oatmeal Raisin, and Double Nut cookies for $11.34. It's the kind of variety designed to speak to every type of sweet tooth, and it turns out, all three are exactly my type.

First up, the Gourmet Chocolate Chunk Cookies. These cookies are thick, chewy, and the chunks are really big and plentiful, ensuring that every bite is chocolatey. The Double Nut cookies are similar, if not poorly named. With cashew and macadamia nuts and white chocolate chunks, this cookie will appeal to anyone who likes the added sweetness of white chocolate. The nuts add plenty of flavor, but really shine in bringing the texture. Finally, my personal favorite and no doubt the most divisive of the bunch, the Oatmeal Raisin. Thick, chewy and brimming with warm cinnamon flavor and a generous helping of meaty raisins, this is as close as you'll get to a perfect cookie.

The Triple Cookie Pack sets out to be a crowd pleaser and more than delivers. Perfect for your next gathering or just as a treat for the family, the variety is hard to beat and the cookies themselves are all fantastic.

From one diverse dessert to another, the Variety Dessert Bars simply can't match the Triple Cookie Pack. This 32-count package contains four different dessert bars for $22.69. Pecan Caramel Brownies, Wildberry Macaroons, Chocolate Chunk Brookies, and Macaroon Madness Bars make up the lineup and are all so close to being really good, but each comes with a fatal flaw.

Let's start with the fact that this pack has not one, but two coconut-based bars. The Wildberry Macaroons are admittedly tasty thanks to a tart berry jam that rests between a bevy of toasted coconut flakes and a soft, buttery macaroon base. Yes, that's double coconut in one bar, but a single, good coconut option is just fine by me. The issue is that the Macaroon Madness Bars are a second coconut-based treat disguised as a blondie. Until I took a bite, I had no idea that this bar was also filled with coconut. It's not as good or as interesting as the Wildberry Macaroon, so this feels like a total waste of space.

On the brownie side, you have the very rich and fudgy Brookie. The brownie portion is excellent, but so flavorful that the cookie gets lost. Meanwhile, the Pecan Caramel Brownie is a turtle-lover's dream, but it leans away from the Brookie's gooeyness in favor of a cakier brownie that feels dry by comparison. Overall, this mix of bars is largely good but never great.

Most of Costco's bakery items are either hilariously huge, like the nearly four-pound pumpkin pie, or come in large quantities, like the cookies or bars detailed above. You don't often snag items like this on an average Tuesday night unless you've already planned for leftovers. The real utility for most of these items is for larger gatherings, be that a party or a holiday, which is where Costco's Artisan Rolls can really shine.

The Artisan Rolls are sold in a 12-pack for $6.80. They're precut and, you guessed it, they're big. The ciabatta-style bread is chewy, airy, and perfect for sandwiches. Especially leftover sandwiches. Perhaps after a food-centric holiday. What I'm getting at is that you need to buy these for the day after Thanksgiving to make some spectacular, carbtastic, leftover sandwiches. They're hearty enough to handle whatever combination of turkey, gravy, potatoes, stuffing, and cranberry sauce you can throw at them, but not so dense that you'll fill up on bread. A good roll in the right setting can make a meal, and Costco's Artisan Rolls are perfect for making the kind of sandwich that inevitably leads to a wonderful nap.

I've waxed poetic about Costco's portion sizes thus far because, for the most part, I can find a way to normalize a massive amount of baked goods in the right setting. There is an exception to every rule, though, and the baguette is mine.

Priced at $5.66 for a two-pack of baguettes, this is an almost absurd amount of bread. Each baguette is nearly two feet long. Combined, that's the height of a 6-year-old. Unlike some of the other items I tried, the baguette also seems to have the shortest shelf life. You either need to eat it that day or freeze it immediately to avoid the outer crust from becoming chewy. If you're hosting a spaghetti dinner that night, this is a decent enough option, but it's still a bread that simply doesn't stay good for long.

I'm not entirely out on the Costco Baguette, but beyond being generally impractical, it's not a product that blew me away with either taste or texture. It's fine, and with so many other things to choose from, fine isn't enough.

In the world of sweet breakfast pastries, I think the Danish is too often forgotten. It's basically the flaky, buttery goodness of a croissant paired with pie filling. Honestly, how could that combo ever be bad?

Costco's danishes come in packs of four. There are a few unique flavors to choose from, with Cheese, Cherry, and Almond as the standards, while seasonal favorites include Strawberry Cream Cheese and Apple Cinnamon. The mix-and-match portion of the name comes from the pricing: You can get two four-packs for $13.61, which is what I did to end up with a Cheese and an Apple.

True to form, these Danishes are hefty and really tasty. The fillings are sweet, but not overwhelmingly so, and the pastry portion is baked to perfection. The Cheese flavor is especially great for anyone who lives on the more savory side of the spectrum, but still likes to dabble in the occasional sweet treat. The Apple was my favorite, though. I like any excuse to eat a classic apple pie for breakfast, and Costco's Danish is the perfect one.

I purchased all nine Costco baked goods at the same time and brought them home to photograph and sample. My evaluations were based on flavor, texture, and overall value.