Costco's New Dessert Find Has Customers Running To The Bakery

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Costco's bakery already offers various French-inspired items such as baguettes, beignets, and butter croissants, but the newest addition to the lineup starts with a letter other than "b." On your next swing through that section of the store, keep an eye out to see if you can spot the chain's new madeleines. (No need to literally run, though; as you undoubtedly learned in kindergarten, "walking feet" are to be used everywhere except the playground.) Madeleines, if you're not familiar with that cookie genre, are small, two-bite sponge cakes that are often baked in ridged molds. They are not filled but may be flavored. According to an Instagram reel posted by a Costco booster, these cookies are yellow in color. And as a subsequent comment indicates, they don't taste like lemon; they're the standard vanilla flavor.

The video poster captioned their cookie footage with a laudatory (if somewhat ungrammatical) statement: "They're soft, light, and everyone in our house loves!" Some commenters chimed in with similarly enthusiastic sentiments without yet having tried these items, demonstrating the popularity of madeleines in general. Other commenters had tried them already and liked them, with one person saying, "Amazing with coffee." Another added, "I've been snacking on these and considering hiding them." Some comments indicate Costco has carried this item in the past, so it's not really a new dessert, simply a returning one. One skeptic speculated by saying, "They just unwrap the packaged ones they already sell." Another objected to the price: "$9.99???? Hahaha hard pass."

Costco bakery items are often the sort of thing to spark a flurry of social media posts, like the pistachio croissants that activated Instagrammers' salivary glands or the blueberry-packed sourdough loaf that had Redditors redditing. One discontinued fan favorite, the cinnamon coffee cake muffins, even inspired a Change.org petition begging for their return. (It has yet to reach 200 signatures, though, so good luck with that.) Despite all this online chatter, to date not one Costco baked good has launched a lengthy memoir that holds a place in the literary canon. That honor does however go to a different madeleine.

A madeleine dipped in tea famously launched Marcel Proust's "À La Recherche du Temps Perdu," or as it is known in translation, "In Search of Lost Time." His memory of a long-ago teatime with his aunt somehow morphed into a seven-book, 1.3 million-word tour de force that holds the record for the world's longest novel. Was the madeleine itself really so evocative? Apparently in earlier drafts of the novel the role was played first by a piece of toast and then by a biscotto. Nevertheless, it's the final edition that counts, and the Proustian madeleine holds a place in literary history that is unlikely to ever be usurped. Of course, it's possible that somewhere out there an as-yet-unknown genius is about to bite into a Costco cookie and launch a multi-volume memoir of their own.