Easy Family Friendly Piña Colada Recipe

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Last updated on October 12th, 2021 at 03:18 pm

Let’s make a summer fun drink that the whole family can enjoy together. Succulent pineapple and sweetened coconut combine with ice in this frozen piña colada recipe. It is fast and easy to make – just throw everything into the blender and let it rip. And, after a few seconds of whizzing blades, we end up with a sweet frozen drink.

A piña colada without the rum is basically just a dessert smoothie. Not a healthy one, mind you, but a smoothie nonetheless. The pineapple and coconut flavors become their own unique flavor when combined. But it is all about the balance. Have too much of either and that flavor is mostly the only thing you can taste. So make sure to measure it out or you’ll have a lot of adjusting to do.

This recipe is adapted from a recipe I had on a different site. Well, still have up on a different site. My piña colada from the site The Smoothies 101. It is an old site that I still have up and have not made any updates to in a long time. It has terrible photos. But the recipes and information are solid. So I thought I’d borrow from myself. Why start from scratch when I could reference something I know works?

So try out this virgin piña colada recipe to make a refreshingly sweet frozen drink. Or, even better, make a flight of summer drinks by pairing this with frozen mint lemonade and a blended watermelon drink.

A What of Coconut?

This recipe uses cream of coconut as one of the main ingredients. Do not confuse this with coconut milk. They are two entirely different products and are made for different things. Though a coconut milk piña colada would be healthier, it would not be quite the same.

Cream of coconut is a smooth, thick, and super-sweet mix of condensed coconut. It is similar to sweetened condensed milk that is used in some baking recipes. The syrup is basically a super-concentrated sweet coconut flavor bomb. No wonder it makes the perfect addition to a dessert smoothie.

If you are looking to buy it at the store then make sure to look near the alcohol aisles. There is typically a section for making mixed drinks that has things like grenadine, lime juice, margarita mix, and seltzer water. Somewhere within that group of items, you are likely to find an option or two of buying cream of coconut.

And if you can’t find it locally or would rather buy it online, you can always buy cream of coconut for delivery.

Pineapple for Piña Colada

For this recipe, I chose to use frozen pineapple. It is fairly easy to come by, can be bought in large quantities at stores like Costco, and it makes it so we don’t have to use as much ice so the drink is more potent. It is easy to just keep some frozen pineapple on hand. And I don’t have to make sure that I have a fresh pineapple that is ripe and ready to slice.

Plus it can be kind of messy cutting up a pineapple.

But you can also make this drink with fresh cut pineapple instead of frozen. Use the same amount of pineapple and then use more ice when blending the drink together.

In that original recipe for the virgin piña colada, I list a 20-ounce can of pineapple chunks in 100% juice as one of the main ingredients. That was for ease of use and to not buy multiple items at the store. No need to have separate juice and pineapple, just buy them together. Genius. However, the quality of that pineapple is not always the best. In my opinion, canned pineapple in juice is lower than frozen which is lower quality than fresh-cut pineapple. But if you want, replace the juice and pineapple in the recipe with one 20-ounce can of pineapple in 100% juice and add some extra ice.

Note that sometimes it can take a powerful blender to really get a smooth frozen drink. If it is not blending well, then you may need to add a little bit more liquid – the pineapple juice in our case – to make sure it can blend smooth. Or you can invest in a high-quality blender like the Vitamix that I have to easily make smoothies without issue.

So try making this cocktail without the rum for a family-friendly virgin piña colada and let me know what you think.

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