Kirkland Signature, from Costco

I've never been to Costco.  I've never had a membership, nor really known anyone else who did.  And yet, like most, I am quite familiar with Costco.  

Sometimes their items show up at potlucks or parties when another guest clearly takes the easy route, grabbing a dessert or pizza on their way out the Costco door.  Sometimes Costco items, particularly the baked goods, show up at cafes or small establishments around town, when merchants know they need muffins and bagels on the menu, but don't want to produce them themselves (which, I am not critiquing, you know how much I love those Costco muffins, and their shelf life makes this very practical!).

Today I am focusing on Kirkland Signature, the house brand of Costco.  They produce nearly every category of item under this brand, ranging from snack foods to vitamins to cleaning supplies, but today's focus is my real interest: food.

Pizza

Original Review, November 2021

Even without ever venturing to Costco, I certainly know about their pizza, the most popular item in the food court.  Available in cheese, pepperoni, or combo.

Signature Pizza Boxes. $9.95 Each.

Pizza comes available in a take and bake form, or ready to eat, always in their branded pizza boxes.  Spot the boxes, and you'll know where you host decided to get pizza from ...

I attended an event where we were supposed to be getting pizza from a nearby well known pizza place, but ... somehow this happened instead.  I was pretty disappointed, but, hey, pizza is pizza, right?

Combo Pizza

I opted for the combo, with pepperoni, sausage, green pepper, onion, mushroom, and olives.

I'll admit ... it wasn't bad, for this style of pizza.  It isn't fancy artisanal crust, the toppings aren't particularly high quality, but the crust had a good chew, the sauce wasn't too sweet, the cheese was nicely melted, and it was loaded with toppings.

Would I go out of my way for it?  Of course not.  Would I be embarrassed to serve it at a party?  Yes. But it did the trick, a notch about frozen pizza.

***.

Update Review, March 2024

Costco Pi Day!

March 14.  One of my favorite days of the year.  In some ways, a better food holiday than the traditional heavy hitters like Thanksgiving.  After all, I do love pot pies, shepherd's pie, macaroni pie, and the like, and obviously, basically *all* the sweet pies.  It is also a glorious day to be in my office, as each team celebrates with their pie of choice, and inevitably has leftovers.  Generally they are from great local bakeries and pie shops, or sometimes Whole Foods or other more curated grocery stores, so I had to laugh when the e-mail came out that a team had tons of extra Costco pie: pizza and sweet pies.

And yet ... I still went running (ok, power walking?) even though I'd had 11 other pies already that day ...  I arrived to find quite a bounty still remaining, the pizzas were untouched, and there were additional sweet pies not pictured here too.

I dug right in. 

Overall?  It honestly isn't bad.  I'd never seek it out, and it is nothing like "real" pizza from a pizza place, but, the price is remarkable, and there is nothing wrong with it, for its style of pizza.

Cheese Pizza. $9.95.

First up, basic cheese pizza.  A very large one at that (18").  Cut into 12 uneven slices.

This is, well, Costco cheese pizza.  It reminded me of my memories of Little Caesars, although it has been a very long time since I've had that.  Or Dominos, Papa John's, or the like.  But again, been many years since I've had those kind of pizza.

Puffy crust with a decent chew.  Soft, bready style, but it wasn't bad.  I actually kinda liked the crust edges, as they had cheese on them too, and it was kinda like getting cheesy breadsticks (or Crazy Bread, in Little Caesar's terms) and pizza all in one, although I did want some ranch or blue cheese to dunk them into too.

Sweet and lightly tangy sauce, slight acidity, plenty of it.  Standard mozzarella cheese, plenty of it too, well distributed.  Light burning of the cheese on top that wasn't a problem.

The kind of pizza you generally want to eat cold.  No frills, but nothing wrong with it either.  ***.

The fact that it is only $9.99 for such a big pizza really is mind-boggling.  I see why people get it for events.

Pepperoni Pizza.

Next up, add pepperoni.  Same price (!).

The foundation of this is the same, although I think it has slightly less cheese (if you look at the nutrition info, the pepperoni pizza is lower calorie than the cheese, which implies it must have less cheese?).  But otherwise, same pizza.

The pepperoni is basic no frills pepperoni, large slice pieces that were well distributed.  Not "cupping" pepperoni, and lacking any char, but, basic pepperoni, no more, no less.  Slightly more interesting than the cheese pizza.  ***.

Dessert

Really though, I had my eyes on the dessert.  I knew Costco makes great muffins, so I hoped the same would be true for other baked goods.

Original Review, November 2021

Dessert Table: All Costco.

Same party, the dessert lineup was all from Costco, I think even including the lackluster fruit.  I ... tried everything.

Caramel Tres Leches: Top. $12.99.

The Caramel Tres Leches is is an impressive looking dessert.

Layers visible from the sides, glaze on top, flakes of chocolate (which, to be honest, were a bit random.  Chocolate and tres leches and caramel?  Why the chocolate?)

Caramel Tres Leches: Side Profile. 

With a slice removed, you can see the layers better: two layers of the cream, two layers of the cake, all about equal in size.

The cake was quite moist, as you'd expect, and did seem to be soaked in some milks.  It was fine, but sweet, which I sorta expected.

The cream layers however did not provide any balance to the sweet cake.  The cream was crazy sweet, caramel cream, rather than traditional whipped cream found on tres leches cake.  It tasted like caramel, but had a strange aftertaste.  The texture was nice though, creamy and smooth.

Overall, this was just highly mediocre.  Not balanced, too sweet, and strange aftertaste.  But it looked good.

**+.

Caramel Flan. $12.99.

The flan looked almost homemade, swimming in a pool of caramel syrup.

It was fine.

Not too eggy, good texture, well set.  The syrup was sweet, but not particularly complex.

Basically, fine, but not notable in any way.

***.

Oatmeal Raisin Cookies.

Well, I don't really like cookies, and oatmeal raisin is fairly universally known as the worst of all the cookies, but ... these really were good for what they were.

Large size cookies, really soft, the way I do like my cookies.  Sweet in a decadent way.  Aggressively spiced but in a way that made them actually interesting.  Plentiful raisins, that were actually soft, not hard pellets. 

For a cookie, an oatmeal raisin one at that, there were actually good.  And for $0.30 each ... definitely a value.

***+.

Milk Chocolate Crepes.

"Kirkland Signature™ Crepes are delicious biscuits from the Brittany region of France.  These crispy delights are a combination of a traditional Crepe Dentelle and fine Belgian milk chocolate.  This recipe has remained unchanged for more than a century and has gained devotees all over the world. 

They can be enjoyed alone or as an accompaniment to your favorite coffee, tea, or ice cream or great idea for a gift."

The holiday season is always a wonderful time for me to try all sorts of new products, as everyone brings their rejects into the office.  One man's trash is another food blogger's treasure, right?

These holiday decorated boxes came from Costco, filled with "milk chocolate crepes", a rather unique, but tasty, item.

Milk Chocolate Crepe.

Inside the box was rows of the "crepes", thin, super crispy cookie wafers, enrobed in mediocre milk chocolate.

This doesn't sound like a recipe for success, but, I really liked them.  Partially I think I liked the element of surprise, I wasn't expecting the whispy cookies inside.  The chocolate wasn't *good* chocolate, and it was sweet rather than actually complex, but again, it worked.

I enjoyed these, I love how crispy they are.

****.

Update Review, March 2024

Pi Day.  The sweet version.

Chocolate Peanut Butter.  $19.99.

"Butter & graham crust / peanut butter cream / chocolate cream."

I had heard about this thing when it came out right before Pi Day last year, and the internet went kinda crazy over it.  I was fairly thrilled to get to try it.  The hype was over the top, but I have access to fresh pies and good bakery items regularly, so I didn't really think a Costco item would be rate particularly highly for me.  I was ready to say, "meh".

It turns out, the hype was valid.  This thing, in full size, weighs 5 pounds.  They consider it 16 servings, but if you were to somehow go for the whole thing, it is 8,640 calories, 656 g fat ... and pure glory.

The crust is super crispy, graham and butter crust per their description, but super compressed (not sawdust like) and definitely heavy in the butter and sugar.  Basically like a Biscoff crust but with gritty texture.  It was great, and complimented the rest of the pie really well.

Above that is the peanut butter cream layer, which you can't see here, but there is a full peanut butter cream layer above the crust.  It has a strong peanut butter flavor, and is fluffy and rich.  A little goes a long way.

And then, chocolate cream, lighter, more mousse like, but also pretty rich.  Mild milk chocolate flavor.  Of course it went well with the peanut butter, classic pairing.

Each component was tasty, each component worked well with the others, and although it was very very rich overall, it was pretty delicious, and did leave me wanting just one more bite ... after a short break.  It isn't, at least for me, the type of dessert you immediately go back for seconds of, but you do plan them for the future.

****.  I'd score it more highly if it had a dark chocolate element, even just some dark chocolate shavings, to balance it out a bit more.

Apple Pie.  $12.99.

The apple pie is equally massive.  The pie weighs between 4.5-5lbs, and costs $12.99.  They consider it 16 servings.  And those would be pretty generous servings.

This is actually a pretty nice looking pie.  Full double crust (not lattice) with leaf shaped cutouts, studded with pearl sugar.  The crust looked, and tasted, homemade.  If anyone I knew had made a crust like that, I'd sing their praises.  It far surpassed any grocery store crust I've had before, and was on par with a good bakery crust.

The filling was good too - big bite size hunks of apple, nicely al dente, not soft or mushy.  Good spicing, and actually a fairly thick goo, not the pie-from-a-can style.

Overall, just, a really good apple pie, that, besides the giant size, could totally pass as bakery or homemade.  Even better warm with ice cream.  ****.