Frozen Cranberry Fruit Salad – delicious twist to traditional Thanksgiving cranberry sauce. An easy and delicious side dish or dessert! Cream cheese, cool whip, whole cranberries, pineapple, strawberries, coconut, and pecans. Make ahead of time and keep frozen until ready to serve. A must for your holiday meal!
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Pin This RecipeFrozen Cranberry Fruit Salad in Muffin Cups
Today I am sharing a delicious twist on a traditional Thanksgiving cranberry sauce – Frozen Cranberry Fruit Salad. It is my favorite holiday cranberry recipe. I actually love this fruit salad year-round! Cranberries, pineapple, strawberries, pecans, and coconut. It is SO good! I love that this is served in muffin cups. It makes it so easy to serve. You can change up the muffin cup liners depending on the time of year. Such an easy and festive recipe!
How to Make Frozen Cranberry Fruit Salad with Cool Whip
This salad is super easy to make. Start with beating some softened cream cheese with some sugar. I use a handheld mixer and it takes about a minute. Next, add a can of whole cranberries, chopped strawberries, crushed pineapple, pecans, and coconut. Mix it into the cream cheese mixture. Finally, carefully fold in some Cool Whip. Scoop the mixture into paper-lined regular muffin pans and freeze. To serve, remove the fruit salad from the freezer about 10 minutes before eating.
- Can use any combination of fruit that you enjoy. Bananas, mandarin oranges, and blueberries would be good.
- Don’t like coconut? Leave it out!
- You can use any nuts you prefer – pecans and walnuts are our favorites.
- Can use low-fat cream cheese and low-fat Cool Whip.
Cranberry Side Dish for Thanksgiving
This cranberry recipe is perfect for your upcoming Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners. It is light and fluffy and full of amazing flavor! It can be a side dish or dessert. We’ve served it both ways. Either is delicious. Here are a few of our other favorite recipes that go great with this fruit salad:
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Frozen Cranberry Fruit Salad
Equipment:
Ingredients:
- 1 (8-oz) package cream cheese, softened
- ½ cup sugar
- 1 (14-oz) can whole cranberry sauce
- 1 (8-oz) can crushed pineapple, drained
- ¾ cup chopped strawberries
- ½ cup chopped pecans
- ½ cup shredded sweetened coconut
- 1 (8-oz) carton cool whip, thawed
Instructions:
- In a large bowl, beat the cream cheese and sugar until fluffy.
- Add the cranberry sauce, pineapple, strawberries, pecans and coconut to cream cheese mixture. Stir to combine. Fold in whipped topping.
- Line muffin cups with paper or foil liners. Spoon fruit salad mixture into cups. Freeze until firm.
- Remove from the freezer 10 minutes before serving.
Notes:
- Can use any combination of fruit that you enjoy. Bananas, mandarin oranges, and blueberries would be good.
- Don’t like coconut? Leave it out!
- You can use any nuts you prefer – pecans and walnuts are our favorites.
- Can use low-fat cream cheese and low-fat Cool Whip.
Steph
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If you don’t have fresh strawberries (wrong time of year!), do you just add more cranberry sauce??
Can the salad muffin cups be made a week ahead and kept frozen? How long will they keep in the freezer?
They will keep at least a month.
OMG my (late) grandmother used to make this recipe (only w/o the strawberries) and I have been looking for it for years with no luck (I’ve found close recipes, but not the same). And then THIS happens to show up on my Tumblr dashboard today out of the blue.
THANK YOU. <3
Stephanie,
I hope you are feeling better after your surgery. I had that surgery years ago and the new techniques used today are way much better and the recovery time is very quick! These frozen salads look scrumptious and I'm for sure going to include these on our Thanksgiving table. Thank you for sharing your recipe.