2021 Christmas Cookie Costs: Prices of Flour, Eggs, and the Basics of a Christmas Cookie

As we approach Thanksgiving and the holiday season, our thoughts have turned to culinary treats that are seasonal traditions in the United States and worldwide. For many of us, baking Christmas cookies is an annual tradition and, despite notable rises in food prices recently, this year is no different. For our sweet-toothed readers, we looked into regional costs of baking ingredients to find the average cost of making a batch of simple (and delicious) Christmas cookies in 60 cities across the US and 30 countries around the world, so you can see which places are getting the most bites for their buck.

How we conducted the Christmas Cookie Price Index

Christmas cookies are a tasty holiday treat, with the cookie baking season typically starting in mid-November around the world. We therefore 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.

To show how the price of home-baked cookies differs from city to city, we also calculated how much the overall Christmas cookie batch price deviates from the median Christmas cookie batch price.

Click here to see our companion study (Holiday Dinner Price Index), which reveals how much the typical local holiday dinner costs per person and for a party of eight people in the same 60 US and 30 global cities.

United States Christmas Cookie Price Index

Below is a table for the 2021 USA Christmas Cookie Index. This list ranks the cost of baking a batch of cookies in major cities across the US and two US territories (American Samoa & the U.S. Virgin Islands) and includes a metric for how much this deviates from the median price. Starting from the least expensive batch to the most expensive one, you can also scroll from left to right to see the total cost of baking a batch of cookies, and the cost-breakdown of each key ingredient in this holiday treat.

International Christmas Cookie Price Index

Expanding our horizons, this table ranks the cost of baking a batch of cookies around the world. Cities in this table are also ranked from least to most expensive.

Methodology

The Christmas Cookie Price Index calculates the cost of baking a batch of Christmas cookies in 60 cities in the US and 30 countries around the world. The key ingredients in a classic Christmas cookie were studied, including flour, eggs, butter, sugar, and baking soda.

All prices were collected in the local currency & converted to USD using the average monthly conversion rate of August 2021.

Cookie Recipe
The Christmas cookie dough is based on a classic butter cookie recipe that creates 100 cookies.
Source: Preppy Kitchen.

Ingredients
The prices of the following quantities of ingredients were collected from local online supermarkets:

- Flour: a 2lb package of flour (32oz / 1kg)
- Eggs: a box of 12 eggs
- Butter: an 8oz serving of butter (200g)
- Baking soda: a 1lb packet (16oz / 0.5kg)
- Sugar: a 2lb package of sugar (32oz / 1kg)

Sources: Available on request.

Deviation from Median
To calculate the difference in price in every location, the price for each ingredient was compared to the median of all prices. The deviation from the median for each location was calculated using the following formula:
(Ingredient price - Median of all prices) / Median of all prices