This pineapple curd ambrosia salad is perfect for graduations and family gatherings! A delicious whipped cream salad without any fake ingredients or food coloring!
This post is brought to you in collaboration with Kroger/Fred Meyer.
As we are coming into the busy graduation and grilling season we’ve been getting a lot of requests for easy simple dishes to take to potlucks. In my brainstorming for ideas, I remembered this salad from my grandmother’s recipe archives that I hadn’t ever made! It’s called “angel hash” according to grandma.
Growing up I heard all about grandma’s famous angel hash salad from my mom, but admittedly I’d never actually had it when we were growing up. But according to my mother her cousins Nick and Mick would single handedly devour this salad at every family gathering and beg my grandma for it every time they came over.
Turns out they were on to something…it’s incredible and SO easy!
We made it even simpler by utilizing Fred Meyer’s amazing service Click List so we didn’t even have to go grocery shopping to pull this dish off! I sat down in my pajama’s after I put the kids’s to bed and put together an order online from the comfort of my cozy bed. The next day the amazing folks at our store brought it all out and loaded up my car with the kids in the car! To say I adore them is a major understatement. I am pretty sure we keep our ClickList department in business and they know us all by name so we are here a lot to say the least.
The dish separates itself from normal ambrosia salad in that it has a simple pineapple curd base. Now don’t get intimidated by the word “curd”. It’s super simple to make curd. In a nutshell all you do is cook pineapple juice and sugar for a few minutes and whisk in a few egg yolks slowly. Easy peasy. But it adds SO much flavor!
The original recipe called for maraschino cherries which are commonly packed with tons of food coloring and high fructose corn syrup (blegh!). While you can find a few organic brands that use beets for the food coloring, we decided to keep it simpler and just use frozen cherries. Perfect choice! They have much better texture and don’t discolor the salad to neon pink.
Grandma’s recipe also had marshmallows in it but in an effort to keep it a bit more “real food friendly” I decided to omit them and sub in crunchy coconut flakes instead. I think it’s perfect this way but if you want mini marshmallows could be added back in.
I hope you make this for one of your events soon!
Happy salad making!
Pineapple Curd Ambrosia Salad Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 cup pineapple juice drained from crushed pineapple
- 2 egg yolks
- 2 cups cream
- 1 cup crushed pineapple or pineapple tidbits
- 1/4-1/2 cup chopped walnuts
- 2 bananas sliced
- 2 cans mandarin oranges
- 1/2 cup frozen red cherries cut in half
- garnish: coconut flakes walnuts, mint leaves
Instructions
- 1. Add pineapple juice, sugar and cornstarch to small saucepan. Whisk. Cook stirring constantly over high heat until thickened. 2. Slowly drizzle the hot mixture into the whisked egg yolks bowl while whisking the egg yolks vigorously (tempering them). This prevents them from turning into scrambled eggs. Return sauce back to pan and cook on medium high for 2 minutes while stirring constantly. Allow to cool.3. Whip the whipping cream to stiff peaks.4. Fold in whipped cream, nuts, mandarin oranges and cherries to the pineapple curd being careful not to over stir. Chill overnight covered.5. Top with sliced bananas, coconut flakes and more chopped walnuts. Serve and enjoy!
Nutrition
Disclosure: This post was brought to you in collaboration with Fred Meyers. All opinions are our own. We adore our sponsors and are so grateful that their support allows us to bring you gorgeous content for free every week!
I am in fact thankful to the owner of this site who has shared this impressive article.
I love old-fashioned desserts like this!
This looks seriously addictive!
This would be the perfect addiction to a traditional Minnesotan potluck!
wow! This really looks like a delicious potluck dish
I can see why it’s a favorite! Great pictures too.
wow! This looks so delicious! I’ll try do it. Thanks for sharing!