10 Costco Bakery Items To Buy And 5 You Can Skip

You heard it here first, folks: Stop sleeping on Costco's bakery section! If this is already a tenet you live by, we congratulate you. Costco's bakery is full of winning cakes, breads, and pastries. I always scope out the section for the odd deal when I'm shopping in the warehouse, but I've never gone out of my way to sample its vast selection of sweets and treats ... until now, that is. 

For this piece, I'm pretty sure I tried at least 75% of what my local Costco keeps in its bakery, and I left with an even more positive opinion about the bakery section than I already had. That said, not every item was a winner, because even America's favorite wholesale superstore can't do everything right. Of the 15 items I tried, I ended up finding 10 I'd easily enjoy again and five that I probably wouldn't go for. When deciding which category each product should fall into, I took into account the ease of buying the product against making your own version at home, as well as its overall flavor and textural appeal. Even my "skip" items have their merits — they just didn't hold enough interest for me to advocate buying Costco's over making your own. So, without further ado, here are the items from Costco's bakery section you should buy, and which you can pass by. 

Will the croissant at your local bakery be better than Costco's? Yes, most likely. But the croissant at your local bakery can't hold a candle to the price of Costco's croissants — $7.93 for a 12-pack at my local store. Plus, unless you're at least a novice pastry chef, you're probably not making your own croissants at home. All of which is to say, these present a worthy buy for those craving a croissant sandwich in the mornings.

Don't worry about eating them all at once, either. These croissants will freeze well when wrapped individually, so you can stretch them over several weeks' worth of breakfasts. Regardless, you'll want to get them a little warm to enjoy these croissants at their full potential. They aren't the most layered, flaky bake in the world, but they taste good and would make an excellent breakfast sando vehicle. Moreover, they're nice and big — always a selling point in pastry land — and they're among the best store-made croissants you can buy. 

Don't consider yourself much of a bread baker? Don't worry — Costco has your back, selling 2-pound loaves of gorgeous Italian bread for just $6.80. I'm a home sourdough baker, and even I'll get a loaf of this bread from Costco on occasion (like when I forgot to prep my starter to make a loaf for a party — oops!). Again, I wouldn't say this bread can compare to something homemade, but it's still a great store-bought option when the need arises. 

I appreciate the structure of these loaves. They have a nice, thick outer crust, and the interior features a pretty tight crumb that makes them ideal for scooping up soups and sauces. The flavor of the loaves is as you'd expect — it's a pretty neutral bread that doesn't have much tang or sweetness to it, and it makes an easy canvas for whatever concoction you dream up in the moment. 

On to my first skippable entry in Costco's bakery, and I already know this hot take will cause some dissent among loyal Costco customers. But, honestly, I didn't find these triple chocolate muffins to be particularly impressive, especially in light of the whole fiasco regarding Costco making its muffins smaller. You could make chocolate muffins at home that taste at least as good as these do, and they probably won't suffer from the textural flaws of this batch. 

The pros? The muffin itself is moist, and the chocolate flavor is rich. But the big detractor for me was the abundance of large, hard, dry chocolate chips in these muffins. Coming across one (which happened in every bite) wasn't a pleasant experience — they just stuck in my teeth without adding anything to the overall flavor of the muffins. The chocolate chips feel like an unnecessary addition, and even those in the interior of the muffin didn't seem to have melted during the baking process. So, yeah, I think you'd be fine without grabbing this box. 

I think the pita bread from Costco's bakery is one of the best (if not the absolute best) pita breads you can buy, and that's a hill I'll die on. I always have a pack of this in my house, and IMO, it even rivals homemade pita bread. This bread is soft, pillowy, sturdy, and flavorful enough to eat straight from the package. Actually, that's often how I enjoy it.

When I have some Costco pita bread and a container of Trader Joe's hummus at my disposal, I'm a happy camper. My lunch on these days typically consists of just that combo: soft, tearable pita (not heated up or anything!), and giant scoops of hummus that send me straight to foodie heaven. Dear Costco, if you're reading this, please don't change your pita recipe — it's a very necessary bakery-section staple in my house, and I'm really not sure what I'd do if it ever left. 

Onto a Costco bakery offering that took me entirely by surprise — its cream cheese Danishes. Honestly, I didn't think they were much to look at, and the icing around the outer edge of the pastry didn't particularly call to me. But, friends, I ate an entire Danish. Keep in mind that I tried all these pastries in one sitting, so I didn't have more than a couple of bites of each. I just couldn't help myself with these.

I adored the slightly sweet, amply tangy cream cheese center, and the pastry was delicious. I wouldn't call it the lightest or flakiest pastry in the world, but it still tasted quite good and wasn't at all dense. Moreover, I actually found the icing to be a really nice touch. It would have been overwhelming if the cream cheese filling was sweeter, but in this case, it balanced out the tangy notes in the filling quite well. 

Alas, I was really upset to put yet another muffin on Costco's bakery "skip" list — but I couldn't justify recommending these to the average consumer, no matter how much of an eye-candy appeal they display. For what it's worth, I really wanted to love these, and I almost (almost!) did, but they had one major flaw that left me wholly unable to enjoy them.

Again, I wanted to like these — the muffins were moist, their crumb was soft, and the blueberries were impeccable. But hiding behind all of that was a subtle (but definitely present) alcoholic extract-y flavor that ruined the whole muffin for me. It's a flavor unique to store-bought muffins that you'll never find in their homemade counterparts, and that's the only reason I can't recommend these. Now, if you know what I'm talking about and don't mind it, you might like these. But if that's something that would bother you, pass them by.

Full disclosure: I'm not the biggest fan of cherry bakes, so it should say a lot that Costco's cherry Danishes made my "buy" list. I liked these Danishes for many of the same reasons I enjoyed their cream cheese counterparts. Namely, the pastry and icing were great, and the filling wasn't at all cloying.

The cherry filling was a little sour here; like the tang of the cream cheese, it made for a nice balance to the thin layer of sweet icing around the filling. The pastry was once again not very dense (though I couldn't call it light, either), and it had a nice, buttery flavor to it. If I had to pick between the two Danishes, I'd say the cream cheese flavor was my favorite, but again, that may just be a hot take — cherry fans are sure to be partial to this box, and I can recommend it without hesitation. 

Now, I'm not really one for store-bought cakes, but Costco's cakes have previously impressed me (especially its bar cakes). I hadn't had its crème brûlée bar cake before this tasting, though, and I honestly didn't expect to like it as much as I did. You've surprised me yet again, Costco — well done. 

From its appearance, I thought this cake would be way more cloying than it actually was, so apparently the old adage about not judging a book by its cover applies to cake as well. I actually adored this. There's a very thin, crunchy layer toward the bottom of the cake that adds a surprising textural appeal to the confection, and the cake is really moist, with the rich flavors you'd expect to find in a tres leches cake. Flecks of real vanilla bean are visible throughout. It's a very good bake, easy to recommend to someone wanting to celebrate with something not too saccharine but still crave-worthy. 

Now, if I had to choose a cupcake flavor, I'd always choose vanilla with vanilla frosting. Call me basic, but sometimes I prefer the simple things. Admittedly, as a home baker, it's rare that store-bought cupcakes satisfy me — I often find them to be either cloying, flavorless, or some strange combination of the two. The latter was the case here. Now, if you're buying them for a kids' birthday party, go right ahead. But as a sweet treat for yourself? Skip.

The white cupcake itself was flavorless, and its texture was incredibly light. Normally, I'd call a light, airy body a good thing in a cupcake, but when paired with a mound of ultra-sweet frosting, it just didn't hold up. The frosting was cloying and fluffy, as if an excess of powdered sugar was used in the production process, and it didn't have any flavor other than "sweet." These cupcakes don't present anything special, and you're far better off just grabbing your favorite box mix and a can of icing for a half-DIY bake. 

If you feel like making your own cinnamon rolls, go right ahead. They're not horribly labor-intensive, but depending on what else you have going on, you may just not have the necessary time to spend on making your own bake — when that's the case, Costco's cinnamon rolls will work in a pinch. My biggest qualm with these was that they're difficult to separate, which is a minor inconvenience for most of us (myself included). 

Each cinnamon roll is huge, which is a really big selling point in my opinion. The flavor of the interior is also great — it's amply cinnamon-y, whereas I sometimes find store-bought cinnamon rolls to skimp on the filling. The cream cheese icing is pretty cloying, but it's also tangy enough that I didn't really mind how sweet it was. While I wouldn't call these particularly moist, I also didn't microwave them at all, which I expect would help with that at least a little.

You already know I love the cheesecake from Costco's bakery — it was the obvious winner when I pitted this selection against the New York-style cheesecake from Trader Joe's. Again, is it better than a homemade cheesecake? Probably not (if you're a baker). But at just over $20, it costs about as much as the ingredients for a homemade cheesecake would cost, without requiring any labor. And it still tastes quite good. 

The texture of this cheesecake is impeccable. It's smooth without being the least bit grainy, and it's also tangy and full of flavor. I find many store-bought cheesecakes to be strangely lacking in the flavor department, so that's a big reason I love Costco's selection. Its crust never has a super-crisp texture, but I can't fault it that — it always has an incredible flavor, which is more than enough to make me happy. Cheesecake lovers, please don't sleep on this bakery pick. 

Another blueberry-based bake that actively disappointed me was Costco's lemon blueberry loaf. Lemon is my favorite dessert flavor, so I obviously love a good lemon-blueberry combo, and I expected to have at least a somewhat positive opinion of this bread (especially given how gorgeous its topping is). Alas, my hopes were unfounded, and to all my fellow lemon-blueberry lovers, I'd recommend skipping this bread. 

My biggest qualm? The bread was surprisingly lacking in the flavor department. It tasted like lemon was only present in the icing drizzle on top. I don't know about you, but if I'm buying a lemon bake, I want the lemon to be noticeable throughout. Even the whole blueberry chunks didn't do much to appease me. The lemon-blueberry flavor profile isn't hard to get right, and when executed well, it's irresistible. Skimping on the citrus and fruit flavors is a pretty inexcusable offense, which is why I can't advise you to try this loaf. 

Another flavor profile I love? Apple anything. Seriously — I live for autumn, not because it's pumpkin spice season, but because apple bakes are abundant. It was particularly delightful to see an apple pastry in the store outside of the season. I was worried these would underwhelm, mostly because I was fresh off of trying a couple of bakes that did underwhelm; fortunately, though, that was far from the case here.

I really enjoyed these bite-sized caramel apple pastries. Each is sprinkled with coarse sugar, which gives the overall pastry a really delightful crunch, even though the pastry itself isn't very crispy. Moreover, the apples inside are present in chunks, a pleasant surprise when I'm used to store-bought apple bakes having a more pureed interior. The pastry holds together well and is nice and buttery, while the apples inside aren't at all cloying. Plus, they're as cute as can be, easy to recommend to fellow lovers of everything apple. 

I'd had Costco's Tuxedo mousse cake before, but not in a minute, and dang — I totally forgot how good it was. Part of the reason I love this cake is that it's far from being one-note. I mean, just look at all those layers! Various textures abound in this cake, and it also boasts a rich, balanced flavor profile that will help it appeal to a wider consumer base. All of which is to say, if you're looking for a cake, this definitely wouldn't be a bad option.

The cake itself is very chocolatey, and the cream layers are decadent, thick, and not at all too sweet. I like how the cream layers are punctuated by dense chocolate pieces, which just bring another texture into the equation that keeps this bake from being the least bit boring. That said, I could have done with some more "cake." I could see some people not loving the cream-to-cake ratio, and thicker cake layers would remedy that; however, I don't think that's a huge setback. 

Lastly, this is what I expect to be another widely debated hot take, but I honestly think you could skip Costco's pack of variety cookies in favor of making your own at home. Now, in the realm of store-bought cookies, I'd argue that these are among the better grocery store selections — but they still don't hold a candle to what you'll pull from your own oven, even if you just use a baking mix. 

On the plus side, these cookies are far softer than I expected, something I'm quite picky about in store-bought cookies. I liked the flavors of each (white chocolate macadamia, oatmeal raisin, and chocolate chip), but the textures didn't really do it for me. The white chocolate and chocolate chunks were pretty hard, and nothing was particularly stunning about any of the cookies. I'd call them mid-range, especially if you do find yourself baking a lot at home. But if you need a quick fix for parties, these wouldn't disappoint the nondiscerning guest; do with that what you will. 

To compile a list of Costco bakery items to buy and those to skip, I aimed to select a diverse range of available items from my local warehouse's bakery. I took at least a couple of bites of each and judged them based on their overall flavor and textural appeal, as well as how they'd fare against homemade counterparts. That last criterion was the make-it-or-break-it factor for some of these bakes. For example, though I wouldn't call the variety pack of cookies bad, you could make your own at home pretty easily, and I do think they'd taste better.