Whether you're making them for a holiday party or to leave out for Santa Claus, baking Christmas cookies is a tradition for many throughout December. From snickerdoodles and gingerbread to sugar cookies and pizzelles, rarely does one batch of the holiday treat suffice for the entire season. However, making them by the dozens can get pricey, especially as the cost of staple ingredients increases due to global supply shortages. To help you understand just how much your holiday cookies will run you up at the grocery store, meal kit provider HelloFresh recently released a study that uncovers the cost of baking a batch of traditional Christmas cookies in 60 United States cities and 30 countries using to-date ingredient prices.
To obtain their findings, the researchers collected the prices of the essential ingredients of the nation's favorite holiday treat, including the cost of flour, eggs, butter, sugar, and baking powder in each location in the study. Additionally, to show how the price of home-baked cookies differs from city to city, the HelloFresh team also calculated how much the overall Christmas cookie batch price deviates from the median price. Their results include prices for major cities across the country, like Dallas, Philadelphia, Las Vegas, and New York, as well as prices for two U.S. territories—American Samoa and the U.S. Virgin Islands.
Related: The Holiday Cookie Recipes Our Food Editors Make Year After Year
They found that the most expensive place to bake Christmas cookies in the U.S. is San Diego, California, where a batch will set you back $12.40, followed by Burlington, Vermont ($12.08), and Los Angeles, California ($11.41). The most affordable cities in the country to bake cookies in include Charleston, South Carolina ($2.23), followed by Charleston, West Virginia ($2.90), and Des Moines, Iowa ($4.13). On average, baking a batch of Christmas cookies in the U.S. will cost you $6.10.
The HelloFresh team also calculated the cost of baking Christmas cookies around the world and found that Sweden is the most expensive country to bake Christmas cookies in—a batch will run you up $12.83. Following Sweden is the Dominican Republic where the holiday tradition will cost you $11.74 per batch, then it's New Zealand ($10.57), Russia ($9.81), and Switzerland ($9.75). On the other hand, Ecuador is the cheapest place to bake Christmas cookies at $3,50 per batch, followed by Poland ($3.62), Spain ($3.80), Germany ($4.04), and Chile ($4.20). "We all know that cookies play a pivotal role during the holidays whether it be a way to bond with family and friends or a way to come together during the most festive time of year," says Carol England, culinary development manager at HelloFresh. "The pandemic put a lot of stress on consumer wallets so we were interested to learn more about which cities and states are seeing the best bang for their buck when it comes to holiday ingredient shopping."