Costco's Holiday Cookie Tray Is A Hit, But This One Treat Was Just A Step Behind

Sweet-toothed Costco shoppers rejoiced when one of the warehouse chain's most-anticipated holiday treats made its heralded return a few weeks ago. This year's installment of Kirkland Signature's Holiday Cookie Tray is being praised as even tastier than last year's tray. The variety pack features 60 cookies in five different flavors (12 of each) for $24.99 (just $0.42 per cookie) — a fan-favorite way to feed a holiday party crowd on a budget (bonus points if you pair those cookies with Kirkland's peppermint bark on the holiday food table). Still, even in a killer lineup, not all cookies are created equal. In Tasting Table's ranking of every flavor in Costco's holiday cookie tray, the toffee sandy fell to the bottom of the pack.

As a whole, we consider this year's cookie tray flavor lineup "better than ever," but still, one flavor had to come in last place. The toffee sandies were ultimately outranked by the other four cookie offerings in this year's tray: butter pecan, red velvet, chocolate chip, and (our favorite) coconut almond chunk. For starters, the promised toffee tones were barely detectable. As our taste-tester noted, "I started specifically hunting for those little blobs of toffee, taking intentional bites with the hope of getting some sort of toffee taste, but alas, the cookie mostly tasted sugary." Not enough actual toffee flavor to live up to the name. In a Reddit thread, one Costco shopper posted a similar complaint, writing, "The cookie itself is more brittle. The toffee pieces weren't extremely noticeable or crunchy."

With a name like "sandy," it's to be anticipated that these cookies would lean crunchier than moist. But, we docked points for texture, as they were "crumbly and drier than expected [...] the weakest link without a doubt." In an Instagram post by @costconewdeals, warehouse shoppers comment that the cookies can be "Hard and dry."

A post by revered Insta foodie account @costcohotfinds announced the highly-awaited return of Costco's holiday cookie tray on November 29. With just under 45K likes, people took to the comments section to sound off — but, when they mentioned specific cookie flavors by name, we didn't see many mentions of toffee. One fan declared, "I claim the row of red velvet," while another replied that "the butter pecan is my pick." However, it's worth noting that the overall response to this year's variety pack is enthusiastic. Some non-hierarchical dessert-lovers cheered, "Every cookie (with a tall glass of milk) was yummy," and "One of each or the whole tray, either way I need that." For those who found this year's offerings sorely lacking in the toffee department, we recommend trying our homemade old-fashioned toffee recipe and skipping the sandies.