9 Costco Items To Make Holiday Baking A Breeze

As the tail end of the year approaches, you're probably already scheduling your holiday plans — counting down the weeks, penciling in dates, and figuring out menu ideas and logistics. For many, baking is a big part of the season. Some people spend hours upon hours baking and crafting cookie boxes filled with a range of treats. Others create layered cakes and decadent cream-filled Yule log cakes or pies for bake sales. Either way, you'll need more than a couple of cups of flour and a splash of vanilla to get through the rush of holiday baking. This level of baking requires something bigger: Costco, the warehouse we all know and love. 

And while you might tend to go there to grab a rotisserie chicken or frozen appetizer, you should also consider it your top stop for all your baking needs. Make it easy on yourself, rather than purchasing essentials from a regular grocery store and succumbing to issues like low stock, poor-quality items (those leaking bags of sugar or flour), or other problems that may arise. Let Costco be your secret weapon this holiday baking season.

Butter brings a richness and deep flavor to baked goods in a way that something like a neutral oil can't provide. That said, there's a lot of debate on using salted or unsalted butter in baking. Some recipes call for one over the other, while others don't even specify. No matter your preference or what your recipe says, there's an option at Costco. There's the Kirkland Signature Salted Sweet Cream Butter, which is one of our preferred choices. It comes with four packs, each with four 4-ounce sticks, and the Kirkland Signature unsalted variety features the same quantity. 

Costco also carries Kerrygold salted and unsalted butter, but at half the size of the Kirkland options — that's four 8-ounce packs of butter. You can also find the salted Kerrygold dupe of sorts in Kirkland's grass-fed butter, which is another one of our faves. One thing about baking is that you'll go through a lot of butter. Our recipe for Christmas shortbread cookies uses a cup of unsalted butter (aka 8 ounces or two sticks). And that's just for one batch of 16 cookies. Multiply that by a few and you're going through a lot of creamy goodness. Spare yourself and just buy these at Costco; plus, it's still a great deal per pound compared to brands like Land O'Lakes or Challenge.

Sugar and baking go hand-in-hand. For the casual baker, a 1-pound bag may fare well, but that simply won't do for larger-scale holiday baking. Instead, you can find a 10-pound bag or 25-pound bag of pure cane sugar at Costco, which comes up frequently in recipes. The warehouse also has a 10-pound bag of organic granulated cane sugar or a 7.5-pound option for organic brown sugar — plus a couple of other choices. You can find the option that works for you in one large bag, rather than buying a bunch of smaller bags at a different grocery store. 

Plus, the prices are unbeatable. Ten single-pound bags of C&H granulated sugar at Albertsons would cost three times the amount as one 10-pound bag from Costco. Now, that's some math we can get behind. Although Costco's sugar selection isn't too wide – there's no dark brown, Muscovado sugar, coconut sugar, etc. — you can still get the basics that an average recipe may call for. Some recipes even call for a blend of brown and white sugar, such as this scrumptious brown butter chocolate chip cookie formula. You can get both at Costco.

Although recipes may give an exact amount of chocolate chips to use, we often measure with our hearts. Either way, you'll run through chocolate chips quickly. Costco has one chocolate chip option: a 72-ounce bag of Toll House semi-sweet chocolate chip morsels. It doesn't give you a lot of choices to work with, but it's convenient and a good price. It's a steal per ounce compared to bags at stores like Target or Walgreens.

A large chocolate chip skillet cookie that serves eight – a fun option to put out for a holiday gathering — uses two cups of chocolate chips. That's an entire 12-ounce bag of chocolate chips. Now, what if you have other plans that involve chocolate chips? What if you wanted to add a tiny sprinkle more? Well, you can't, not with that small package. That means running to the store again or paying more to grab multiple bags; this is a waste of money, time, and gas money to boot. Costco is a great spot to get your chocolate morsels if you know you'll need a bunch for your holiday baking.

Even if you're not baking in huge quantities, a Costco-sized container of vanilla can be an economical asset to your kitchen. Once opened, vanilla can last for years as long as it's in a cool and dry area, like a cabinet. So, when you actually are using a lot of vanilla, buying from Costco makes the most sense. Costco's pure vanilla extract comes with 16 ounces of delightful goodness. You can also buy Nielsen-Massey Vanilla Bean Paste with 10 ounces of product at a fraction of the price per ounce compared to the same product at Williams Sonoma or Amazon. And it's still cheaper than more affordable stores like Walmart. You can use vanilla bean paste in many of the same applications as you would the pure extract at a 1:1 ratio. 

Costco also sells a 20-count of Kirkland Signature organic whole vanilla beans if you prefer to process them yourself. The vanilla paste and beans also add a visual component to your cooking, thanks to those tiny vanilla specks — ideal if you want people to eat with more than just their taste buds. With Costco's trio of vanilla options, you can make all the vanilla loaf cakes and vanilla cupcakes that you need this holiday season (and beyond).

Egg prices always fluctuate, but one thing's for sure: Costco has some incredible deals on huevos. Eggs are frequently used in baked goods to bind the dry ingredients together. It's easy to go through a dozen eggs any time of year, but when you're doing holiday baking in larger batches, you're going to need a bigger boat ... er, well, more eggs. Costco sells a few options, such as five dozen cage-free grade AA eggs, for a stellar price; it's way better than buying multiple packs of eggs at other stores. 

A classic white cake alone uses five egg whites, so you'll make your way through five dozen in no time when you tack on several dozen cookies or a few homemade pies. But Costco also has a smaller quantity of 24 eggs, if you know you're not going to use as many — although the 60-count is a better deal per egg. You can purchase organic eggs if that's more up your alley. If you need quail eggs for whatever reason, you can occasionally locate those, too.

Flour is an absolute must for your cookies, cakes, and other confections. Pick up a 25-pound bag of Ardent Mills Harvest all-purpose flour at a fantastic price. If you're selling your bakes at the farmers market or giving them as gifts this season, this is a top place to get your flour. Although it may vary depending on your particular recipe, you can expect one loaf of freshly-baked sourdough bread to use 850 grams of all-purpose or bread flour. That's nearly 30 ounces of flour in one loaf. If you're multiplying that by many loaves, then yeah, Costco is the way to go.

And hey, if you are making some gluten-free goodies, Costco is still the place to visit. You can get 3 pounds of superfine blanched almond flour at a steal of a deal compared to places like Target or Albertsons; it costs almost the same or more to get a teensy single-pound bag of product from the grocery store. There's also a 6-pound bag of Bob's Red Mill 1 to 1 baking flour, which is a combination of sweet rice flour, whole grain brown rice flour, potato starch, whole grain sorghum flour, tapioca flour, and xanthan gum. Spare yourself some dollars and buy your holiday flour from Costco.

Nuts can be outrageously expensive at the grocery store, so Costco's warehouse prices really come into play for this suggestion. First of all, there are so many nuts to pick from. You'll find anything from 1.5 pounds of shelled pistachios to 3 pounds of walnuts to whole organic unsalted unroasted cashews. There are quite a lot of options to make the wholesaler your favorite destination for holiday baking. Try your hand at walnut pillow cookies, which use up 1 ½ cups of walnut pieces for 48 small cookies. You'll go through a bag in no time. A lot of the nuts come whole, so you can always process them as needed for your recipe. 

For example, the walnuts come halved, but the walnut pillow cookie recipe calls for walnut pieces; you can chop the nuts with a knife to get the desired sizing. This makes them a more versatile option than pre-chopped nuts. Then you can grind walnuts for a 3-ingredient walnut cake without having to purchase various bags of nuts to keep track of. Making classic Italian pignoli cookies? Yep, you guessed it. Simply snag a 1.5-pound bag of organic pine nuts (technically a seed) from the nut section at Costco. There are other nuts too, such as unsalted nut mixes, or even seeds like raw sprouted pumpkin seeds.

If you plan on baking a lot of cinnamon-y treats this holiday season, then you may want to pick up the 10.7-ounce container of organic Saigon cinnamon at Costco. It's about economics and convenience — the price is unmatched. A measly 1.25-ounce jar of McCormick organic Saigon from Albertsons costs more than the 10.7-ounce one from Costco. If you were doing your holiday shopping at your nearest store, this seems perfectly fine at first glance; it's not like it's $50 or anything. But the prices really add up when you have to purchase larger quantities. 

Now, when you have a list of cinnamon-laden things to bake, this Kirkland product is your best bet. Try making a cinnamon orange coffee cake to serve with coffee or to gift family members this winter. It alone uses 5 teaspoons of ground cinnamon. Costco also sells McCormick organic cinnamon sticks, if you prefer to grind your own sticks into a powder for baked goods — or, employ them in one of the many ways to use cinnamon sticks, including making cinnamon brandied cherries or lingonberry sauce to enjoy for the holidays. We love our Kirkland Signature cinnamon and use it in everything, so you'll get plenty of use out of it even after all your holiday baking wraps up for the season.

We've talked a lot about ingredients for your baking needs, but what about actual baking tools? Well, Costco has those too, although these may vary based on your store location. You can find a Nordic Ware 3-Piece Naturals Baking Sheet Set that conveniently gives multiple-sized sheet pans in one purchase. It comes with a half sheet, a jelly roll pan (that's just what the pan size is called), and then a quarter sheet. That means you can bake smaller items (like a couple of small ramekins of apple crumble) without wasting precious space in the oven — ideal if you're cooking in batches. 

You can also find a set of three aluminum quarter sheets or a full-size pan at Costco Business Center. We've made the mistake of buying baking sheets at Target that tend to warp and rust really quickly. If you normally head straight to the fridge or freezer aisle when you venture to Costco, you may want to take a turn and walk through some of the other aisles to see what kind of baking treasures await you. You never know what your local warehouse may have in stock.

We picked out these items based on our baking experience and familiarity with Costco. We went through the Costco website, Costco Business Center website, and Costco Same Day (via Instacart) to see what kind of items were available. We were specifically keeping in mind baking larger quantities of items — be it multiple cakes, dozens upon dozens of cookies for holiday cookie boxes, piles of pies, you name it. We wanted to keep the items mentioned pretty versatile while also sharing what makes it something useful to get at Costco versus your typical grocery store.