16 Fruit Salads Recipes to Enjoy All-Year Round

Ambrosia Fruit Salad With Sour Cream Dressing — The Spruce/Diana Chistruga

Whether you're planning a backyard gathering, potluck party, or holiday dinner, there's a fruit salad for that. We've collected our favorite fruit salad recipes you can make any time of year with fresh produce. Some of them celebrate seasonal fruits, and others "cheat" with canned ingredients, but all are delicious. Browse our list below to find a fruit salad for any occasion, from casual summer events, to celebratory fall and winter meals. You'll even find a few throwback recipes that deserve a second look now.

The Ultimate Guide to Seasonal Fruits and Vegetables

01 of 16

Summer Fruit Salad

The Spruce/Diana Rattray

This easy fresh fruit salad is like summer in a bowl. Bursting with ripe, seasonal berries, grapes, orange sections, and tropical fruits, and a delightful honey-citrus dressing, it's a healthful take-along for all your picnics, potlucks, and summer events.
02 of 16

Buko Salad (Filipino Fruit Salad)

The Spruce/Ahlam Raffii

Creamy and delicious buko salad is a guaranteed party favorite. Made with canned fruit cocktail, canned peaches, and a mixture of full-fat cream and sweetened condensed milk, this luscious and traditional Filipino fruit salad is made for enjoying all year-round.
03 of 16

Ambrosia Fruit Salad With Sour Cream Dressing

The Spruce/Diana Chistruga

Ambrosia fruit salad is a holiday essential for many families. While some may challenge why this nostalgic recipe is called a "salad", it's unquestionably delicious, with canned tropical and citrus fruits, coconut, marshmallows, grapes, and a creamy and tangy base. Feel free to serve it over lettuce leaves to silence the haters.
04 of 16

Thai Banana-Lychee Dessert in Coconut Milk

The Spruce/Julia Hartbeck

You need just 10 minutes to make this tropical, Thai-style banana-lychee dessert. It's something like a cold dessert soup, with sweet and juicy lychee fruit, and ripe, silky banana slices, floating in a rich, dairy-free, cholesterol-free coconut milk base.

Continue to 5 of 16 below.
05 of 16

Mexican Christmas Eve Fruit Salad (Ensalada de Nochebuena)

The Spruce/Ulyana Verbytska

Colorful, festive, and brimming with healthy fruits and vegetables, this traditional Mexican Christmas Eve salad deserves a place on your holiday table. It's a fabulous edible centerpiece that's good for you, too. Assemble it ahead, adding the easy lime vinaigrette dressing at serving time.
06 of 16

Apple Salad With Pecans and Raisins

The Spruce / Tara Omidvar

If you enjoy Waldorf salad, you're sure to like our tart and crunchy apple salad. It's full of wonderful fall flavor, with red delicious apples, celery, pecans, and raisins, in a creamy mayonnaise dressing. You don't even need to peel the apples — though you could toast the nuts, if you like, for deeper flavor.
07 of 16

Old-Fashioned Frozen Fruit Salad

The Spruce/Diana Chistruga

If you're nostalgic for your grandmother's holiday frozen fruit salad, you'll warm to this recipe. It's a snap to prepare with convenient canned fruits, which are frozen in a loaf pan, nestled in a creamy base of whipped cream, mayo, cream cheese, and marshmallows. Decorate slices with maraschino cherries for a old-fashioned holiday dessert.
08 of 16

Strawberry Pretzel Salad

The Spruce/Eric Kleinberg

Call it dessert, or call it a salad. Either way, this layered strawberry pretzel salad is delicious. It's a great choice for holiday parties, serving to your book club, or enjoying whenever you need a treat. Whip it up in 30 minutes with instant strawberry gelatin, sliced frozen strawberries, pretzels, cream cheese, and a few other easy ingredients.

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09 of 16

Thai Grapefruit Salad With Shrimp

The Spruce/Darlene Schmidt

Refreshing, light, and nicely sweet, this Thai grapefruit salad with shrimp is perfect for summer dinners. It's full of wonderful tropical flavors, including plump, pink shrimp, tart-sweet grapefruit, nutty coconut, crunchy salad vegetables, and fragrant fresh herbs, all drizzled with a zingy, Thai-style dressing.
10 of 16

Fruit Salad with Vanilla Pudding

Alison Miksch/Getty Images

Creamy vanilla pudding turns this fun fruit salad into a kid-friendly dessert. It's a cinch to throw together with fresh and canned fruits, some sour cream, and instant vanilla pudding mix. You could also serve it for a special, secretly healthy breakfast treat.
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Morelian Gazpacho Fruit Salad

Kimberly Low/EyeEm/Getty Images

Morelian gazpacho fruit salad will remind you of a pico de gallo salsa, but is made with fresh fruits instead of vegetables. It's a lively, slightly spicy chopped salad with crunchy bits of jicama and onion, juicy tropical fruits, and crumbled queso cheese, all dressed in zesty, fresh lime juice.
12 of 16

Tropical Fruit Salad

Andrew Unangst/Getty Images

Just a little coconut milk and lime juice make this tropical fruit salad a lighter, healthier, fresher form of fruit cocktail. It's a perfect party salad, made with a mouth-watering medley of pineapple, mango, papaya, kiwi, banana, grapes and dragon fruit.

Continue to 13 of 16 below.
13 of 16

Creamy Vegan Ambrosia Fruit Salad With Pineapple

Lauri Patterson/Getty Images

Do you long for a vegan version of the ambrosia salad you remember from holidays past? We're here to make your dreams come true. Our vegan ambrosia fruit salad is dairy-free, and cholesterol-free, with all of the great tropical fruit and coconut tastes you remember, plus a little silken tofu adding creaminess.
14 of 16

Thai Fruit Salad With Coconut Lime Dressing

The Spruce/Darlene Schmidt

This beautiful Thai tropical fruit salad is a taste of paradise. Use a combination of local and tropical fruits to make it, depending on what is available. They're all tied together by a sweet coconut-lime dressing that beautifully enhances the luscious taste of the fruits.
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Spanish Macedonia Tropical Fruit Salad

Creativ Studio Heinemann/Getty Images

In Spain, fresh fruit salads are popular for everyday eating. This tropical fruit salad is chilled in an easy honey-citrus dressing, and makes a nice, refreshing addition to any salad bar buffet, summer potluck, or picnic lunch.
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No-Mayonnaise Creamy Frozen Fruit Salad

Diana Rattray

If a frozen fruit salad including mayonnaise doesn't appeal to you, try this mayo-free version. It is just as creamy, with a decadent whipped cream and cream cheese base (but no marshmallows). Make it for the holidays, or any time of year, with canned fruits and maraschino cherries.