Cookie inflation: How much more is your holiday baking costing you this year?

Heavy snowflakes float outside your window as the timer on your oven starts to ding. You pull open the door and feel the warmth of a freshly baked batch of sugar cookies. As the sweet scent spills into the room, all you can think is, “Didn’t these used to be cheaper to make?”

Food inflation has run rampant over the past few years and the ingredients of your festive favourites haven’t been spared.

Costs are going to vary by region, grocery store, brand and plenty of other factors — but using Statistics Canada’s monthly average retail price data, we can estimate how much more your Christmas cookies will cost to bake this year compared to the past five years.

Prices actually peaked last year, so the good news is you might be saving a bit of money compared to 2023. But you’re not wrong to reminisce about Christmases past.

The approximate price of one batch of sugar cookies has gone from $3.67 in 2019 to $4.84 this year — a 32 per cent jump.

And for those who don’t have their kitchen stocked up but decided to sign up for the office cookie contest anyway, gathering all the raw ingredients from scratch is going to cost upwards of six dollars more than it did five years ago.