Here's The Worst Cake You Can Buy From Costco's Bakery (And Why It's Still Pretty Good)

When you find yourself in need of procuring a large cake on short notice, fervently scrolling through Pinterest is not your best bet — however, driving to a local Costco is. The store's bakery section has a lot to offer, especially if you're looking for classic cake flavors that are tried-and-tested crowd pleasers. We sampled and ranked 6 popular cakes at Costco and had a surprising discovery: Even the worst cake on the list is better than many store-bought cakes.

Costco's 10-inch chocolate cake with chocolate mousse filling placed last on our ranking because it was just okay. There was nothing very special about it flavor-wise. It lacked a certain depth and richness that are commonly expected from a good chocolate cake, like Costco's very own All-American Chocolate Cake used to have. This lackluster flavor is further imbalanced by an overly sweet frosting and an underlying feeling of eating a meh cake that's just not hitting the spot. The flatness of taste could be explained by the lack of butter among the ingredients. Instead, Costco has opted to use a variety of oils, such as soybean oil, palm oil, canola oil, and palm kernel oil, ultimately sacrificing the complexity of flavor that butter brings.

The flavor may be uninspiring, but the cake's texture saves the day and ensures that this Costco chocolate cake doesn't end up on our never-buy list. Let's start with the two cake layers — they are light, fluffy, soft, and moist. Everything you'd ever want a cake to be in terms of texture. Hiding between the layers is chocolate mousse that our taste tester called "velvety smooth," which gives a pretty accurate picture of its perfect consistency. It balances out the layers and makes the entire cake a bit more substantial and delectable, purely from the mouthfeel aspect.

One customer commenting on the Snarkle-Sauce website found the freshness of this cake to be incredibly reliable, even after it spent over a week in the fridge. The layers stayed spongy, and the mousse didn't change its consistency at all. On one hand, that's great news for those who need to buy a simple cake a few days in advance; on the other hand, it speaks to the amount of artificial preservatives inside the cake, which could put off some customers from purchasing it. All in all, this chocolate cake is something you might bring to an office party but probably wouldn't serve on your bestie's birthday. And if you'd rather try your hand at whipping up a fast cake at home after all, our one-bowl dark chocolate olive oil cake only takes an hour to make from start to finish.