Can you freeze a Costco pumpkin pie for later?

For pumpkin pie lovers, a perfect slice can be a once-in-a-lifetime experience, meaning there’s a lot at stake to ensure it’s flawless. And for Costco fans, that might mean it only comes from one source: the warehouse store’s popular bakery.

Maybe it’s Costco’s loyalty to a certain variety of pumpkin or some other kind of Kirkland brand magic, but the popularity of this cake has made it a big challenge to snag one during the holiday week. In some cases, hours-long queues have been reported, which isn’t particularly practical when you need to prepare a multi-course meal at home – or simply complete a standard holiday to-do list. The best strategy to avoid the chaos of last-minute cake shopping is to shop early, but that can compromise freshness.

This begs the critical question: Can you freeze your Costco pumpkin pie? And fortunately the answer is yes. A simple, no-bake pumpkin pie may have clever secret ingredients and plenty of mistakes to avoid when baking it from scratch for the holidays, but by making sure you have the process of freezing the pie under control, you can you avoid the biggest faux pas pas.

Freezing your Costco cake is entirely possible and only requires a few simple steps. Remove the cake from the plastic packaging and wrap it well in several layers of plastic wrap (the goal is to prevent air from reaching the surface of your prized purchase). For extra protection, a layer of aluminum foil or a handy freezer-safe round cake pan can help strengthen it.

It may be helpful to know that you can also freeze a homemade cake. However, make sure it has cooled completely before wrapping it up. It’s also helpful to opt for the aluminum cake pan, which you’ll also find in the store-bought variety, as it’s more efficient from a freezing perspective than a reusable one and less likely to cause freezer burn.

In any case, it is important that you put this into action quickly as freshness is important not only for quality but also for food safety. A few months is the upper limit of how long you want to leave your Costco pumpkin pie in the freezer. Once you’re ready to enjoy the cake of your dreams, all you need is a little patience; Thawing on the countertop is quicker, but it affects the crust. Instead, leave it in the fridge for about eight to twelve hours and then get ready to make the cake you’ve been dreaming about all year.