6 Costco Desserts To Bring To A Cookout And 3 To Leave At Home

Costco is the perfect place to get all of your party essentials. As temperatures rise and you're planning your next barbecue or cookout, you might lean on the wholesaler for the bulk of your food and beverage needs. While you can get hot dogs, condiments, and other items, you might want to grab some desserts too. However, not everything that Costco sells is a good option for a cookout, so we'll give you some insights on what you should bring and what's better left at home. 

We've tried most of these items and speak from experience, but for the other ones we haven't tried, we've consulted reviews and previous taste tests. Factors such as messiness, textural issues, and less approachable flavors help determine why they're best skipped. Whether you're hosting the cookout or just a guest, it never hurts to load up on scrumptious desserts, and there are plenty that are a good fit for outdoor festivities.

The Kirkland Signature Cheesecake is an absolute essential for any type of function. It's 12 inches inches diameter, so it can definitely serve a crowd. The great thing about choosing the standard cheesecake, rather than a flavored one from another store, is that you can add any toppings you like. That means you could decorate the cheesecake to fit your party colors, or any other theme you might have going on. It has the graham cracker crust and a sour cream topper, but it's a relatively blank slate for flavor add-ons. 

Drizzle some caramel, add chocolate chips for a slightly crunchy texture, or even top it with fruit for something a little more vibrant and fresh. You could add strategically placed blueberries and strawberries to create a red, white, and blue cake, perfect for the Fourth of July. Of course, there's nothing wrong with serving it just the way it comes. It's certainly a delicious treat and one of the best Costco desserts shoppers seem to love. It has little indentations to indicate the slice, but you can cut them even thinner if you want to manage the portions for a crowd.

Ice cream is an essential for parties and cookouts, so the Kirkland Signature Super Premium Vanilla Ice Cream is a must-have for many reasons. First of all, it is delicious, very creamy, and highly versatile; you can serve it alone, make ice cream sandwiches, create milkshakes, sundaes — you name it. Vanilla means you can incorporate various toppings and mix-ins to make it a fun experience for family and guests: Think something along the lines of a DIY ice cream station, where kids (and adults) can create their own concoctions. 

Another reason it's a good fit is simply because of the flavor. When you're entertaining guests, you don't necessarily want to go with the most unique flavor option like cotton candy. Vanilla is extremely popular among American consumers, and Costco customers love that this product uses real vanilla extract. One Costco review says, "This is by far the best vanilla ice cream we've had!" The last selling point is the value: You get two half-gallon containers, compared to the 1.5-quart sizes you'll often see in other stores. There's nothing quite like ice cream on a hot summer day, and Kirkland's is one of the best.

Tru Fru is delicious, and there is no denying that. There is something incredibly satisfying about taking a bite into the icy strawberry with a nice layer of white chocolate and milk chocolate. It has a terrific balance of flavors. However, this might not be the best fit for an outdoor summer cookout. The instructions say to let the treats thaw for 15 minutes for the best results. There's typically a lot of hubbub at a cookout: You are flipping burgers, chatting with family, and monitoring kids in the pool, so perfectly timing how long something has been thawing is very difficult. 

Summer temperatures are high, and this product is highly susceptible to melting. Not only that, but the whole point is that it's a frozen strawberry, not a fully thawed, soft strawberry. Think about any chocolate product left out in the sun, and you're left with extremely messy fingers and melted chocolate coating the inside of the plastic bag. The nice, even coating is now just a gooey mess everywhere but on the berries themselves. We say you should leave these at home and stash them in your freezer for another occasion, such as just eating them in your air-conditioned living room. We have tried every Tru Fru flavor, so we know what we're talking about here.

It's always nice to have a more inclusive menu for people with various dietary needs or restrictions. JonnyPops Organic Rainbow Fruit Stacks Frozen Pops are a great buy at Costco because they are free of eggs, dairy, and gluten. They're also kosher, vegan, and made in a peanut-free facility to accommodate a wide range of dietary needs. If you've ever had a dietary restriction, you know how tough it can be to go to events knowing there's hardly anything, if anything at all, that you can eat. That's why we highly suggest stocking up on these, because they are flavorful, fruity, and nice to look at. You'll get 18 pops, perfect for kids or anyone who wants to enjoy them. 

They're also layered with flavors, so you get a variety of options in one pop, and that way, you don't have people (kids, mainly) fighting over a specific flavor or color. They are all the same! The bars are layered from top to bottom with cherry, orange, lemon, lime, blue, raspberry, and grape, respectively — plenty of reviews mentioned that the kids love it. Since it's made primarily with fruit and vegetable juices, we have found that these can melt pretty quickly, so only take them out of the freezer right when you're ready to serve.

Compared with other Costco chocolate desserts, the Kirkland Signature Ice Cream Bar is best avoided. It's a bit almond-forward because of the little morsels throughout the chocolate coating. The flavor profile might not appeal to the masses as much as plain chocolate and vanilla. Some reviews note that the chocolate coating tastes somewhat waxy and that the ice cream isn't very creamy, leaning more toward the icy side. Given that it comes with 18 bars, we're not so sure this would get eaten at a cookout. 

We've purchased the bars before, and they stayed in the freezer for months untouched. Other Tasting Table writers ranked it last in a roundup of Costco frozen desserts – therefore, it's not the best Costco has to offer. The coating isn't proportional to the amount of ice cream either, so it's basically a huge chunk of ice cream with a thin chocolate coating and plenty of almonds. Consider getting another brand like Häagen-Dazs at another store, which comes in a much smaller pack of three or six. Although the Kirkland ice cream bars have some great reviews, they're not worth the freezer space unless you're sure the guests will eat them. Just skip this one for now.

The Tuxedo Chocolate Mousse Cake is constantly regarded highly. It has chocolate cake, white and chocolate mousse, brownie pieces, chocolate ganache, and chocolate decorations. It's delightfully chocolatey and, surprisingly, not extremely sweet, thanks to the mildly bitter cocoa profile that levels it out. Guests will love it because it's moist, impressive, but not so dense that it's unpleasant. The cake is an easy dessert to pick up at Costco, yet people will gobble it down, thinking it's expensive. The layers and chic swirl design on top make it look like you got it at a fancy bakery, not from Costco. 

Just keep the cake refrigerated so it doesn't melt and the mouse doesn't turn into slime. You can spare yourself the trouble of guests lining up for a piece by cutting the cake ahead of time; that way, you can just pop them onto plates when ready or leave the sliced cake in the fridge for people to serve themselves. It was deemed the best Costco cake, because it's so delectable and easy to devour. Make sure to cut yourself a piece and stow it away for later, because guests will love it and it may be gone before you know it.

Cookies are a must-have for cookouts. As people crowd around the food table to squeeze ketchup on their burgers or grab a handful of potato chips, a classic chocolate chip cookie might catch their eye as a way to balance all the salty foods. Chocolate chip cookies are a favorite for many, which is why we recommend getting the 24-pack of Kirkland Signature Gourmet Chocolate Chunk Cookies. It even ranked as the No. 1 cookie from Costco's bakery, beating out everything else for its decadence and approachability. And don't worry about the summertime temperatures. The chocolatey sweets are fantastic if they get a little melty in the sun; in fact, people say they like to heat them in the microwave for 10 seconds, so the sun offers a similar effect.

People can eat the cookies on their own, crumble them over ice cream, or even use them to make ice cream sandwiches. These are soft, yet not so fragile that they fall apart to the touch. However, if you find they're too soft to use for things like ice cream sandwiches, let them sit for a day or two — basically, buy them the day before you go to the cookout. The cookies have a generous amount of chocolate chunks, unlike some grocery store chocolate chip options. They are highly satisfying and delicious when you want to bring a chocolate-based treat to the function.

Don't bother buying the 24-count of Kirkland Signature Variety Cookies pack. Variety might seem like a good idea to bring to a get-together, but you have to consider what the variety consists of. The Costco product includes eight of each flavor: chocolate chunk, oatmeal raisin, and double nut. That means chocolate is likely the first to go. Every time we see oatmeal raisin cookies, there's always plenty left over. 

Not only that, but the nutty cookie ranked quite low in a previous Costco bakery cookie taste test, because it was hardly nutty at all. The nuts Costco chose to use are interesting too: macadamia and cashew. You might have thought they were peanut butter-based at least, but nope. Generally, this cookie seems to have flavors that people don't like. Just skip the trio and get the chocolate chip pack instead. If you really want to go the variety pack route, get a 60-count pack. This has 24 chocolate chips, 18 oatmeal raisins, and 18 double nuts. The proportions still aren't great, but they are better than the standard 24 pack.

We've covered some tasty items like chocolate chunk cookies and ice pop treats, but what if you want something even less messy, in which you don't have to use multiple napkins to clean your hands or wipe off stickiness from your toddler's face, neck, and arms? The Sugar Bowl Bakery Madeleine Cookies are perfect for such occasions, and they're delicious, too. You'll get 28 cookies that you can use in a myriad of ways.

Costco reviews say they like that they can be paired with anything from fruit to ice cream, so they're a diverse cookout option. These are sweet, yes, but their buttery profile makes them stand out from other Costco desserts. You don't have to sacrifice flavor if you don't want something chocolatey or hyper-sweet. It helps that they are individually wrapped and don't require refrigeration or freezing. That means it's fuss-free for a party; you don't have to worry about people touching everything or it melting in the sun. If you have leftovers, you can place them in the pantry and just eat them before the best-by date. Or, you can offer them to the cookout host to keep.

We picked items to buy based on approachable flavors, versatility in how you can use them, cleanliness when eating and serving, how easy they were to set up at a party/whether they required any preparation, and whether we thought people would enjoy them at a gathering. We drew on years of hosting experience for these recommendations. 

We've tried most of these items to better determine whether they are a buy or an avoid. We wanted tasty desserts that are easy to serve, whereas the items we deemed best to leave at home had some sort of issue that meant they weren't a fit for a cookout.