Cookie Salad

This cookie salad recipe is made with whipped topping, buttermilk, mandarin oranges, pineapple, vanilla pudding and your favorite fudge striped cookies. While it isn’t the most traditional combination, trust me that these ingredients go SO well together — you’ll go back for second and thirds and everyone will be asking for the recipe!

Looking for additional creamy side dishes? Try my acini di pepe pasta salad, creamy grape salad, apple Snickers salad, and creamy cucumber salad recipes.

Why This Recipe Works

• In addition to being delicious, this recipe is literally SO easy to make! I’m saying probably 10 minutes max. Opening and draining the cans is probably the most time-consuming part of this recipe — and that’s saying something because there are only TWO cans.
• This is the perfect light dessert/side for potlucks, parties or family dinner. The cool whip, canned fruit chunks and vanilla pudding give this cookie salad a delicate, fluffy, light and sweet flavor. And don’t forget the yummy crunch of the cookies! I feel a little guilty calling it a side salad, but, the word “salad” is in the recipe name already…
• Growing up, we’d always have a bunch of cans of pineapple chunks and mandarin oranges in our food storage. This recipe is a fun way of using these canned fruits!

Ingredients

• Vanilla Pudding Mix: Be sure to get the dry mix INSTANT pudding. We’ll combine this with the whipped topping and buttermilk to make the base of the cookie salad.
• Buttermilk: Be sure to use buttermilk and not just regular milk. Buttermilk is different than regular milk because it is thicker and has higher acidity levels and lower fat levels than regular milk.
• Canned Pineapple Chunks: Drain all the liquid out so the whipped topping mixture isn’t at all runny. We want to keep as much fluff as possible.
• Canned Mandarin Oranges: Drain all the liquid from the mandarin oranges too!
• Whipped Topping: Whipped topping has more structure than homemade whipped cream, so I definitely recommend using a store-bought tub of whipped topping/cool whip instead of the homemade kind.
• Fudge Striped Cookies: Can’t have cookie salad without the cookies! Grab a pack of the fudge striped cookies, crumble or cut them into chunks for the perfect garnish to this “salad.”

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Mix the vanilla pudding dry mix and the buttermilk in a medium-sized bowl until combined.

2. Add the cool whip/whipped topping and gently fold in until just combined. We don’t want to deflate the mixture by over mixing.

3. Add in the canned fruit that has been completely drained.

4. Put the cookies in a bag and crush them until they are in chunks.

5. Add the cookie chunks to the cream and fruit mixture. Serve immediately.

Recipe Tips

If you know you’re going to have leftovers, I recommend not adding the cookie chunks to the main bowl. Instead, put the cookie chunks in a separate bowl and let people add the cookies to their individual servings of the cookie salad. This way, when you store the remaining in the fridge, you don’t have cookie chunks in there that can get soft from the cream mixture. Then just add additional cookie chunks to each serving the following times you serve the dish.

Be sure to use store-bought whipped topping/cool whip. Homemade whipped cream doesn’t stay firmly whipped as long as store-bought does.

Fully drain each can of fruit so there isn’t any liquid. If you have lingering liquid then the cream mixture will be more liquidy than fluffy.

Variations

• Make a cookie salad parfait: using individual cups, put some of the cream mixture at the bottom, add a few cookie chunks, a dollop of whipped cream and repeat until the cup is full. Top with a cookie and serve as individual parfaits.
• Turn this into a cookie salad trifle: In a trifle dish, layer cream mixture, cookie chunks, whipped topping, and repeat until the trifle dish is full. For added flair, you can put full cookies outward facing on the edge of the trifle dish for a cookie-exposed look.
• Turn it into a pie: Make my homemade graham cracker crust, fill the crust with the cookie salad and store in the fridge to chill.

FAQs

Favorite Cookie Recipes

• Double Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Small Batch No-Bake Cookies
• Brown Butter Chocolate Chip Cookies
• Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies