4 Best And 5 Worst Costco Desserts To Buy

One of my favorite parts of any Costco shopping trip is picking up a dessert. Since opening a Costco membership, I've discovered many of Costco's desserts are worth purchasing over and over, and others I won't be repurchasing (I tried to include non-seasonal items in this, though Costco has many holiday and seasonal treats). Perhaps unsurprisingly, every single item I ended up loving has that almighty Kirkland Signature label on it.

To pit these desserts against one another, I chose ones I knew were great and others that looked promising. After sampling, I compared them based on individual texture and taste. The best desserts were ones that had a texture perfect for that specific food and a flavor that was exceptional. In general, I found the Kirkland Signature brand carried the field. In fact, there have been few items from Costco's private label that I have not enjoyed. Please note that for this sampling, I was limited by availability and unable to try some popular treats, like Costco's Chocolate Peanut Butter Pie, for instance.

Some recommendations are based on firsthand impressions of promotional materials and products provided by the manufacturer.

The packaging of the Gille Swedish Spring Cookies couldn't be prettier, with a green and pink graphic design and the cookies pictured on the front. The box contains raspberry rings, crispy oat cookies with dark chocolate, and oat crispies. None of these cookies tasted bad necessarily, but none of them were ones I would look forward to as a snack or proudly serve at a party. With each cookie, the taste wasn't sweet enough, and the cookie was either too crunchy or too soft.

When I tried these, I was immediately taken back to the times I've sampled a sweet treat from another country and been disappointed in the level of sweetness. The cookies just taste like they're missing something, and for this reason, they're one of the worst snack (let alone dessert) options you can get at Costco.

It's just so easy to fall in love with Costco's desserts. They're big and sharable, and for our family of three, it'll take us a week to go through an entire cheesecake. We're big believers in the fact that life's just too short to go without dessert, and the cheesecake has been a favorite of ours since we first tried it. At $19.99, it might feel steep since it's a basic cheesecake, but one bite will have you convinced. While places like The Cheesecake Factory focus on unique flavors, this tastes like the kind of cheesecake served by a steakhouse that's as renowned for its cuts as its moist, flavorful cheesecake.

If your family favors cheesecakes with toppings, it holds up well to additions, but the simplicity of a plain cheesecake is also lovely. Costco's comes with a graham cracker crust with some sour cream topping that is just as enjoyable as the cake itself. My family initially tried this cheesecake after first discovering Costco's unforgettable tiramisu cheesecake. We're a little split as to which one is ultimately better, and I think it depends on the situation. If you're looking for a simple, reliably delicious option, the basic cheesecake is ideal. I should note that some of my fellow writers may disagree and see the cheesecake as one of the Costco grocery products you may want to avoid, but I think the flavor speaks for itself, even if the saturated fat is a little high.

My very first time visiting Costco, I saw these right away and was intrigued. The packaging feels elevated as the tiramisu is served in glass containers. For $9.99, you get six personal servings of tiramisu. I had high hopes for these. They look the part and seem like they'd be perfect for a party as a nice treat to offer. Unfortunately, I was underwhelmed.

Having made tiramisu and sampled my fair share of fabulously curated tiramisus, these just don't hold up. The glass containers are a nice touch, but the flavors just aren't as substantial as they should be. Everything had something of a muted taste. It reminded me of when I've had things flavored like tiramisu without actually being the dessert. If you've never had real tiramisu (which actually started off as a happy accident), you might enjoy these. But for those who count it as one of their favorite desserts, the texture and flavor are all just off. If you want a tiramisu item full of flavor from Costco, seek out that tiramisu cheesecake. You won't be disappointed.

When I first moved to Florida, I fell head over heels for Publix's carrot cake bar. But then, I met the Costco carrot cake bar, and, as they say, there's always bigger fish to fry, and this one is massive. The carrot cake bar from Costco is big, moist, and tasty. All throughout the cake, you'll find shredded carrot and plump raisins. The frosting is perfectly tart and a lovely complement to the cake itself.

This carrot cake is the closest I've had to tasting the homemade carrot cake I've made on several occasions and remember from childhood Easters (amongst the egg hunt madness, of course). The taste is sweet without being overwhelmingly sugary and the texture is exactly what you want. Not to mention, with such a large bar, there is plenty to go around. With cake this good that you can pick up on your Costco run, there's no need to sweat it out shredding carrots because the homemade feel is baked right into Costco's cakes.

We have a little tradition in my house: popsicle o'clock. At about 7 p.m., my son declares that it is "popsicle o'clock," and all three of us enjoy a refreshing treat. We've tried a range of different brands, with Bomb Pop branded treats becoming a new favorite. So, when Goodpop reached out, asking if we wanted to try the brand's Organic Cherry and Lemonade sold in Costco, I was eager to give them a try. While these have great flavor, they're behind in texture.

I remember popsicles being more like Goodpop when I was a kid. Essentially, they were flavored ice pops. In fact, you can actually suck the juice right from the ice. While that's enjoyable, the types of popsicles I've enjoyed more recently have been more soft, though not overly melty. They have a smooth consistency, but the Goodpop ones are really more ice pop. Unfortunately, in texture, these are a step down from the typical Bomb Pop that they seem to try to imitate.

Ice cream becomes the sidecar to many desserts, but with ice cream this good, the Kirkland Signature Vanilla Ice Cream can stand on its own. Everyone in my family loves this stuff, from my son all the way up to my dad, who actually avoids dairy if he can. This ice cream, though, is too tempting.

The ingredients inside these generously sized ice cream ½ gallon containers are simple. In fact, every item, except the carob bean gum and guar gum, are ingredients you no doubt have in your kitchen already. These simple ingredients give the ice cream a decadent homemade feel. I have been impressed by just how soft the ice cream stays in the freezer. It's simple to scoop and easy to love, whether the ice cream is the star of the show or plays a supporting role. The pro move is picking up this ice cream with your Costco pie for a decadent à la mode experience.

Like the tiramisu cups, these flan desserts come in little glass containers. Unlike the tiramisu, however, these cups remind me more of baby food containers. The tiramisu ones were actually more attractive than these. Another big issue with these flan cups is the texture. Where I've had flan before that feels like a rich custard, these were more like Jell-O. No disrespect to Jell-O, but these just had an unappetizing feel.

The flavor wasn't so bad initially, but the longer it lingered on my tongue, the more I got an aftertaste that was like a poorly (even falsely) sweetened treat. To make matters worse, the sauce on the bottom had a bitterness to it that tasted nothing like a caramel sauce. For texture and flavor, this was easily one of the worst Costco desserts I tried. If you want Costco flan, buy the ingredients you'll need from the warehouse and make it fresh.

The thing about breakfast pastries is that they could be desserts, too. This loaf is the perfect example of a breakfast pastry that knows it's a dessert deep down. The loaf is a mix of blueberry and lemon, flavors simply made for each other. The drizzled topping makes for a delicious accent and the perfect decoration to throw this breakfast treat well over into dessert territory.

Perhaps the most impressive part of this loaf is that the whole thing only cost $8.99. At Starbucks, a single piece of loaf runs about $4.50, so getting a whole loaf and cutting it on your own is much more reasonable. Not to mention, at home, it's easy enough to pop it in the microwave for about 15 seconds and add some butter to make it even better. The bread is also exceptionally moist, an absolute necessity and one that most Starbucks loaf treats struggle with.

When all else fails, cookies often make the best desserts. The Rip Van Wafels Cookie Variety Pack has three types of cookies: a sandwich cookie (Romeos), Wafers, and a stroopwaffle cookie (wafels). Within each Romeo box, you get individually packaged cookies with two in each pack. The cookies are too hard, and the chocolate is too bitter. The wafer cookies were marginally tasty initially, but eventually, they developed a weird aftertaste, and the stroopwafels behaved similarly.

Simply put: These cookies reminded me of a health food that is trying to steal people away from tasty options. It is unnecessarily trying to make you feel bad for the cookies you already enjoy and replace them with worse-tasting options. In each of these, the texture was pretty good, but the flavor makes them all a loss.

Since my family has become Costco members, we've been sampling a variety of desserts around the store. To separate the very best from those I didn't like, I considered flavor and texture.

For each dessert, the best items had great flavor and a reasonable texture. The items I deemed worst were lacking in one or both of those areas.