Easy Cool Whip Ambrosia Recipe

This Cool Whip Ambrosia Salad recipe is about as quick and easy as they come. If you have 5 minutes and 6 ingredients, you can mix up this simple but super delicious low-calorie dessert.

Jump to:

• 💬 About Ambrosia Salad
• 🥣 Ingredients
• 🥥 Coconut? Nuts?
• 📖 Instructions
• 🍚 Sugar-Free Options
• ⏲️ Quick tips and tricks
• 📋 Recipe
• 📺 Watch the how-to video

I found the best recipe.

I was flipping through my Mom's old cookbooks yesterday, just looking for something sweet to make. And in between her Better Homes & Gardens and her Joy of Cooking, I found these thin spiral-bound cookbooks. They were dog-eared little recipe collections put together in the 1980s by the members of my Mom's Women's Club.

It was great to see it again because I remember so many of these recipes from when I was a kid.

Some of the recipes are so simple that you'd never find them in a real cookbook. Take poke cake for example. The instructions are "Bake a white box cake. Poke holes in it and pour Jello into the holes. Done." It was ridiculously simple to make, but who cares? Poke Cakes are the height of popularity!

Which brings me to another ridiculously easy dessert: the Cool Whip Fruit Salad, also known as Ambrosia.

💬 About Ambrosia Salad

Looking for more fruit salads with whipped cream? Try this Watergate Salad, Mandarin Orange Jello Salad or Jello Fluff Salad. All three classic Cool Whip fruit salad recipes will take you back in time.

🥣 Ingredients

• Cool Whip
• Mini Marshmallows
• Pineapple Tidbits
• Mandarin Oranges
• Maraschino Cherries
• Sour Cream or Plain Greek Yogurt

🥥 Coconut? Nuts?

These are optional ingredients that you can mix with the fruit and marshmallows. You can add chopped pecans, chopped walnuts, and/or sweetened shredded coconut to your Cool Whip Fruit Salad. I've gotten some salty comments from people who insist that an Ambrosia Fruit Salad recipe must include shredded coconut, but these people can talk to the hand.

Because I just don't understand.

📖 Instructions

You start by draining the pineapple, mandarin oranges, and maraschino cherries very well.

Then mix together Cool Whip and sour cream in a large bowl.

Fold in the marshmallows. Fold in the cherries and pineapple. Fold in the mandarin oranges last because they are the most delicate and prone to break.

Finally, you chill the "salad" in the refrigerator for at least 2 hours. It's perfectly fine to eat it right after you mix the Cool Whip Ambrosia up, but chilling it gives the marshmallows time to soak up the liquid from the fruit.

🍚 Sugar-Free Options

• I used Sugar-Free Cool Whip when I tested this recipe, but if you compare the nutritional labels of Regular and Sugar-Free, there is just a teeny tiny difference between the two. They both have 3g of carbohydrate, but Sugar-Free Cool Whip has 20 calories and regular has... 25 calories. So either one is fine.
• Buy the pineapples and mandarin orange slices canned in water or juice, rather than syrup to make the recipe as low in sugar as possible. Go for "No Added Sugar" if you can.
• There are no sugar-free maraschino cherries on the market, unfortunately.
• You can buy sugar-free marshmallows on Amazon.

La Nouba Sugar-Free Marshmallows

Buy Now →

⏲️ Quick tips and tricks

• You can swap the sour cream with plain yogurt if you'd like. I've tried making the "salad" both ways and couldn't taste any difference between the two.
• You can use fruit flavored marshmallows for some added color and flavor.
• You can also add 2-3 drops of red or green food color to give it a nice pale pastel look. Just stir the food coloring in after you mix together the Cool Whip and sour cream.
• I put sweetened shredded coconut on the optional add in list, but many people see coconut as one of the main ingredients. So if you are on Team Coconut, you can add in ½ cup of coconut along with the marshmallows and fruit for a little added texture. Or you can just sprinkle a little shredded coconut on top as a garnish.
• You can add in chopped pecans or walnuts if you'd like. Just use ½ cup of one or the other.
• And the elephant in the room: the canned fruit.  You are free to use fresh fruit if you like, but in this one instance, canned fruit might even taste better.  The juices mix with the whipped topping when it sits in the fridge, and make it extra yummy.  But the following fruits will work in this salad: strawberries, bananas, blueberries, grapes, and apples.  
• This really is the best Ambrosia Salad recipe to bring to get-togethers (not to brag).  It makes a great side dish at Thanksgiving or Christmas dinner and you will be the toast of any potluck dinner. I bring this to family dinners and am always the belle of the ball.

And that's that. 👩‍🍳

In just a few minutes, you'll have a super tasty Cool Whip Ambrosia recipe with just 100 calories per serving. After your first bite, you'll see why it ended up in the old beat-up community cookbook. These are all the best recipes from each woman, the ones that always slayed when they brought them to Tupperware parties and potluck dinners. The ones that everybody always wanted the recipe for.

All you need is 6 ingredients and 5 minutes, and you can make yourself Ambrosia, the food of the gods. 🥰

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📋 Recipe

📺 Watch the how-to video

If you are looking for another quick fruit and cream recipe, try my Goat Cheese Covered Blackberries.