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Frog Eye Salad is a creamy, sweet side dish made with couscous, fruit, marshmallows, and homemade pineapple curd. Perfect for potlucks!
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This Frog Eye Salad is a delicious side dish often found at big gatherings like potlucks, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. Similar to other sweet fruit salads like Watergate Salad or Ambrosia, it combines fruit, marshmallows, pasta, and a creamy dressing. Perfect for a summer BBQ or family reunion. You can make it ahead of time and just add the marshmallows right before serving. Top with extra whipped topping and maraschino cherries for a salad that basically doubles as a dessert.
Ingredients in Frog Eye Salad
- Pearl Couscous – you can also use acini di pepe pasta or pastina
- Pineapple – this recipes uses tidbits and crushes pineapple as well as juice from both
- Mandarin Oranges
- Mini Marshmallows – I like to use the fruit flavored ones
- Sweetened Coconut Flakes
- Cool Whip – thaw in the fridge ahead of time
- Sugar
- Salt
- Egg – the egg thickens the pineapple curd for the dressing
Homemade Pineapple Curd
The base of the dressing for Frog Eye Salad is a homemade pineapple curd, or custard. It is tart and sweet and it has a smooth, spreadable texture. Pineapple juice from the cans of pineapple, egg, salt, sugar, and flour (some recipes use cornstarch) are combined and heated in a small saucepan until thickened. Finish it off with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice and ta-da! To make without eggs, use prepared instant vanilla pudding instead of pineapple curd. You can replace some of the milk with pineapple juice when preparing the pudding.
Recipe Tip
Cook couscous until just al dente. If you cook the couscous too long, then it will get soggy in the salad. Rinse the pasta in cold water to immediately stop the cooking process and cool the pasta.
Frequently Asked Questions about Frog Eye Salad
The name comes from the couscous – the pearls look like tiny little frog eyes.
You can, but we don’t recommend it. It changes the texture of everything too much.
Our recipe includes pineapple curd, pearl couscous, Cool Whip, pineapple, mandarin oranges, mini marshmallows, and sweetened coconut flakes.
Homemade Whipped Cream
For convenience we use thawed Cool Whip, but you could absolutely use homemade whipped cream. You can make homemade whipped cream by mixing heavy cream, a little bit of sugar, and some vanilla extract in a stand mixer. Mix on medium speed until stiff peaks form.
More Sweet Salad Recipes
How to Make Frog Eye Salad
Frog Eye Salad
Video
Ingredients
- 20 ounces pineapple tidbits drained, but SAVE THE JUICE
- 8 ounces crushed pineapple drained, but SAVE THE JUICE
- 1 1/2 cup sugar
- 1 Tablespoon flour
- 1 egg
- 1/2 teaspoon salt
- juice of ½ a lemon
- 14 ounces mandarin oranges drained
- 1 cup pearl couscous or acini di pepe pasta
- 1 1/2 cups water
- 1 cup miniature marshmallows
- 1/2 cup sweetened coconut flakes
- 8 ounces Cool Whip thawed
- Maraschino cherries for garnish
Instructions
- Make the pineapple curd: Take 1 Tablespoon of the pineapple juice and mix it with the flour in a small bowl to form a paste. Measure out 1 cup of the reserved pineapple juice and add it to a sauce pan. Start to heat over medium heat. Whisk in egg. Add the flour paste and whisk to combine. Add sugar and salt. Cook over medium heat, whisking often, for about 10 minutes, or until thickened. Remove from heat and stir in lemon juice. Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
- Bring 1 ½ cups water to a boil. Add couscous and cook for 8 minutes, or until couscous is al dente. Rinse with cold water and then drain. Place in the fridge while you prepare the rest of the salad.
- Add the drained pineapple tidbits and crushed pineapple to a large mixing bowl. Drain the mandarin oranges and add to the bowl. Pat the excess liquid off the fruit with a paper towel. This will prevent your salad from being too liquid-y.
- Add cooled couscous, cooled pineapple curd, marshmallows, and coconut to the bowl. Stir to combine.
- Fold in Cool Whip. Refrigerate for at least 1 hour.
- Serve with Maraschino cherries.
Notes
- If you are making this salad more than a few hours in advance, wait until right before serving to add the marshmallows and coconut.
- To make without eggs, use a instant vanilla pudding instead of pineapple curd. Make the pudding according to package directions but substitute some of the milk with the reserved pineapple juice. Allow the pudding to set up before adding to the salad.
- Use homemade whipped cream made with heavy whipping cream instead of Cool Whip, if desired.
Love it
This is a new addition to my go-to summer recipes! It is so rich, packed with flavors and soo refreshing!
This Frog Eye Salad is so delicious and creamy, my kids and husband definitely enjoyed this for dessert!
This tastes so fresh and delicious! It made for a great treat for the family. The kids keep asking when we can have the frog dessert again.
This is one of those recipes that is great all year long!! It’s so tasty!! My kids laugh at the name, but boy, they sure love it!