This fruit cocktail salad takes less than 5 minutes to prepare and the pastel mini marshmallows make this the perfect salad for Easter.

If you can't find the pastel marshmallows use the white ones. Kind of boring, I know, but the pastel marshmallows are so fun and they just scream Easter to me. I like to include a recipe video along with my recipes towards the bottom of the post, but since this recipe just required to drain some cans and stir together fruit and cool whip, I decided against making a video. In other words, it's stupidly easy.
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How is this a Salad?
Us Midwesterners like to serve these types of salads at Holiday and this type of salad is probably something you'd see sitting out at a church potluck. It’s not your typical salad with lettuce, cucumbers, and tomatoes. Usually, these type of fluff salads (another name for them) contains cool whip/whipped topping, canned fruit, and pudding mix. My favorite is Cookie fruit salad because of the fudge striped cookies on top. If you want to go the extra mile you can beat your own heavy cream but I don’t like to do that. Cool Whip is fast and easy and doesn’t get any kitchen equipment dirty besides a spatula.
Ingredients for Fruit Cocktail Salad
2 15 oz cans of canned fruit cocktail packed in water
1 8 oz container of Cool Whip lite
1 cup of pastel mini marshmallows
How to make Fruit Cocktail Salad
- Drain the juice out of the canned fruit cocktail. Reserve ¼ of the fruit cocktail for the top.
- Add fruit cocktail, mini marshmallows, and cool whip to a medium to large sized bowl.
- Stir or fold the cool whip together with the fruit and marshmallows until well combined.
- Serve the salad in a clear glass bowl and flatten the top out with a spatula. Add some extra marshmallows and the reserved fruit cocktail to the top of the salad. This lets people know what is in the salad.
- Makes a total of 10 servings and I used a ½ cup for each serving.
Storage for Leftovers
To keep this salad fresh, please store the leftovers in an air-tight container large enough to fit whatever is left.
Other Fluff Salad Recipes

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Fruit Cocktail Salad
- Yield: 10 1x
Description
Fruit cocktail salad takes less than 5 minutes to prep and only has 3 ingredients!
Ingredients
2 15 oz cans of canned fruit cocktail packed in water
1 8 oz container of Cool Whip lite
1 cup of pastel mini marshmallows
Instructions
- Drain the juice out of the canned fruit cocktail. Reserve ¼ of the fruit cocktail for the top.
- Add fruit cocktail, mini marshmallows, and cool whip to a medium to large sized bowl.
- Stir or fold the cool whip together with the fruit and marshmallows until well combined.
- Serve the salad in a clear glass bowl and flatten the top out with a spatula. Add some extra marshmallows and the reserved fruit cocktail to the top of the salad. This lets people know what is in the salad.
- Makes a total of 10 servings and I used a ½ cup for each serving.
- Category: Salad
- Method: Stir
- Cuisine: American
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1
- Calories: 95
- Sugar: 10g
- Sodium: 7mg
- Fat: 3g
- Saturated Fat: 3g
- Carbohydrates: 18g
- Fiber: 1g
- Protein: 0g
Jenna says
yes just make sure to keep it covered
terri says
can I make this the day before serving it.
Sandy says
We make this in Florida using a pint of sour cream rather than the chemically phoney Cool Whip. The marshmallows sweeten up the sour cream and we add canned peaches, pears, canned pineapple and maraschino cherries.
★★★★★
Miranda says
Thank you for this it really helped me
★★★★
Jenna says
Thanks Jerri!
Jerri jones says
Easiest to make and was great the first time I made it
★★★★★
Jenna says
That's cause I didn't use it.