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Your local Costco Bakery makes some great cakes and cupcakes. And, you can't beat the price.

Here's how to get this great deal. Head to the back of the store where the bakery is located. Look around for the cakes. Usually they have a refrigerator where the finished cakes are stored awaiting pickup. Look around for the form, "Sheet Cake & Cupcake Order Form." Fill that out and deposit it into the slot. The only catch is that you need to order these one day in advance. The form actually says, "1-day advanced notice appreciated", so maybe you can get same day service, if its a slow day.

At my local warehouse you can get:

• Filled Half Sheet Cake, Serves 48, $15.99
  • Cake: White or chocolate
  • Filling:Vanilla Cheesecake or Chocolate Mousse or Strawberry Mousse
  • Icing: White buttercream or Chocolate buttercream or Cream Cheese
  • Decorations: roses, bouquets, balloons, baseball, ranibows, golf, smiling sun, football, princess, hockey, stork, basketball, umbrella, skateboard, cross, soccer, american flag, trophy, billiard, or graduation (with school colors)
• Filled Half sheet carrot cake, serves 48, $17.99
• White & Chocolate cupcakes (20 per package) $15.99 per package.

Update: the Costco Sheet Cake order form was previously linked here, but I removed it at the request of the real Costco.

Want a cheap, healthy snack. Pick up the organic peeled carrots snack pack (Costco item number 22457) in your warehouse's refrigerated section. This is a fairly new item, although warehouses have stocked the big 3 pound bag for quite a while. These cost $5.79 at my local warehouse. Eating one pack will get you 60 calories, zero of those are from fat!

This item contains 24 individually packaged and sealed 2.25 ounce servings of organic cut and peeled baby carrots. These are packaged by Grimmway Farms and are organic. They are grown without the use of synthetic pesticides, herbicides, or fertilizer.

Baby carrots were invented by a carrot farmer in the late 1980's. He noted that much of his crop was too ugly to sell in grocery stores, and came up with an automated process to cut and peel these ugly disfigured carrots into the tasty looking baby carrots we have today.

Occasionally you might get a bag of slimy carrots. The slime occurs when the bag was not properly refrigerated. This might occur when a truck is being unloaded and the carrots are left on the loading dock for too long, for instance. In my experience, it happens more often in the hot summer months.

Some (but not all) Costco Warehouses carry the Cheesecake Factory original cheesecake (Costco Item 51011). This is a 4 pound 9 inch frozen cheesecake, precut into 12 slices. It sold for $11.49 at our local warehouse.

You can order similar cheesecakes online. You can also get a 7" cheesecake ($24) or a 10 inch cake ($43) from www.cheesecake.com, but they will add $25-$35 for shipping. (These need to be shipped overnight, or two-day, and they are packed in dry ice.)

Once you get your frozen cheesecake home, you will need to thaw it before you eat it. If you are going to serve the whole cake, you should probably purchase it the day before and let it thaw in the refrigerator overnight.

The cheesecake is pre-cut and each individual piece is lined with some paper. If you are eating alone, this makes it feasible to pull out a single piece and thaw that. If you are in a hurry, you can try the microwave. I have had good luck using 1 minute on the defrost setting of my microwave, but it took some experimentation to get the right time down. For your experiments, set the microwave at low power and 15 seconds. Keep popping it back into the microwave, until you can just cut it with a fork.

This makes a great dessert.

Most Costco warehouses have their own bakery, and one of the most popular products coming from their bakery is the bagels.

These bagels (Costco Item #31865) are cobranded with the Kirkland Signature name and either Noah's Bagels or Einstein Brother's Bagels. Noah's and Einstein Brother's are two chains of bagel and coffee shops. Noah's operates primarily in the western United States, while Einstein Brother's is in the South. The two chains share the same corporate owner, the Einstein Noah Restaurant Group.

A sure sign of a Costco newbie is someone trying to buy a single bag of six bagels. Although, they are packaged in bags of six, you need to buy two of these bags and put it a double wide bag. You can mix and match the bags choosing any from any of the variety of bagels offered. (At my local Costco a while back, you needed to package three six packs into a triple wide bag. This lasted for a few months and then reverted to the double wide bag.)

Most warehouses offer six varieties of bagels: plain, cinnamon raisin, sesame and poppy seed, honey cracked wheat, and either Parmesan cheese with olive oil or onion. Some warehouses also offer "everything bagels" which contain onions, cornmeal, and poppy, sesame, caraway, fennel, and sunflower seeds.

A dozen bagels might sound like more than you can eat before they go bad, but it isn't. Here's the secret: when you get home put the bagels into the freezer. When you want to eat one, take it out of the freezer and microwave it. (I give it 60 seconds on "defrost" and an additional 30 seconds on "high", but your microwave may be different.) Coming out of the microwave, even month old bagels taste as fresh as just bought bagels.

You can get some great foods in the back in the deli section of a Costco warehouse. One I tried and ate up was the "Swedish Meatballs with Fetuccini" (That is Costco's misspelling of fettucini, not mine.)

It is sold by the pound, I got it for $2.99/lb, but the price varies by location. It comes in a standard tray, about 4 pounds in the tray. You can find in the refrigerated section at the back of the store, near the meat department. Not all warehouses carry it. If you really want to try it and can't find it, go to the customer service desk and ask about item number 35866. They can look up on their computer and tell you which warehouses carry it.

It takes about an hour to cook in the oven, if you include the preheating time. The instructions say 40-50 minutes at 350 degrees. The microwave instructions are to just put it in and heat on "medium" until the internal temperature is 160 degrees. I recommend using the conventional oven with this dish.

The dish is delicious straight out of the oven, steaming hot. The meatballs are big, about 1.5 inches in diameter. You can't fit one in your mouth, you'll have to cut it in half. The fettucini is not too soft, yet fully cooked.

It contains wheat, milk, and eggs. So skip it if you are allergic to any of these ingredients.

The Costco hot dog and soda combo (Costco item number 138158, $1.50) is an icon, right up there with the McDonald's cheeseburger and Campbell's chicken soup.

Despite its iconic status, the Costco hot dog experience varies around the country. Most Costcos sell the Hebrew National hot dog, and a few use Best Kosher brand. One warehouse, the Chicago Lincoln Park location, serves Vienna beef hot dogs. Not coincidentally, the Vienna beef headquarters is right next door.

The hot dog is not the healthiest meal you can have. You'll pick up 552 calories, 288 of them from fat. There's enough sodium (1800 mg) in it to satisfy three quarters of your daily needs, and don't expect to get any essential vitamins from this meal.

You can substitute a sausage for a hot dog, if that fits your taste. Most of the country favors the all-beef hot dog over the sausage by about a 2 to 1 margin. In the West, you can get the polish sausage, but in the Northeast you are served a polish sausage with onions and peppers.

In 2007, Costco sold about 75.6 million of these hot dog soda combos, for $1.50 each. And, they've been selling them for that price since 1985.