🍍🥥🍹 My Easy Piña Colada recipe is cool, refreshing, and made with five basic ingredients in just five minutes. I provide both blender and hand-shaken methods, as well as a virgin option, so everyone can enjoy!
The Easiest Piña Colada Recipe
When I think about a vacation, I always think about frozen piña coladas, and well, margaritas. You don’t need a tropical vacation to bring cool, creamy, coconutty, and refreshing piña coladas into your life.
These homemade piña coladas are just sweet enough but not too sweet because there’s no “piña colada mix” used. That’s the stuff that can tend to make a piña colada taste fake or overly sweet, but I avoid it in my homemade piña colada recipe.
I like to make a blender batch that serves about four at a time, but you can always scale this recipe down. Time to get tropical!
Love piña colada flavors?
Prepare a batch of pina colada seven layer bars, pina colada chex mix, or my pina colada fruit salad to snack on while you sip.
Piña Colada Ingredients
You only need a handful of common ingredients, including the following, to make this recipe at home:
- White rum (or omit for virgin piña coladas) – White rum has a lighter flavor because it hasn’t been aged. Aged rum will work in piña coladas, but it’s stronger in flavor and may overwhelm the pineapple flavor. Do not use spiced rum for this recipe
- Pineapple juice
- Cream of coconut – For an easy pina colada, you need to look for canned cream of coconut. I like to use the Coco Lopez brand of cream of coconut. It’s sweetened and a bit syrupy. Do not use coconut cream, which is unsweetened and very thick. Do not use coconut milk. It is much thinner and unsweetened. Cream of coconut, coconut cream, and coconut milk all come in cans. Don’t get confused
- Pineapple – Technically speaking, you don’t need fresh pineapple to make an easy pina colada. What I like to do is cut a fresh pineapple, then freeze it, then blend it. Tips: I recommend using frozen pineapple chunks so you don’t need to use as much ice. However, that doesn’t mean that you technically have to start with a fresh pineapple. You can start with a bag of frozen pineapple tidbits or chunks. I do not recommend using canned pineapple that you freeze and then use. Something about the taste just doesn’t work for me, although everyone is different
- Ice
- Maraschino cherries, optional for garnishing
- Pineapple wedges, optional for garnishing
How to Make My Frozen Piña Colada Recipe
It doesn’t get any easier to make a batch of homemade pina coladas in a blender!
- Add all the ingredients to the canister of a high speed blender.
- Whiz until the mixture is smooth. If your homemade blended pina coladas are coming out a little runny, add more ice. Or, if you accidentally added too much ice and they’re too thick, adding a little extra pineapple juice (or more rum if you’re like me) will smooth it out.
- Taste the mixture and adjust the flavors as necessary. Some people prefer piña coladas with a stronger pineapple flavor, others like it to be more coconut-forward, etc.
- Pour the mixture evenly intof glasses.
- Garnish with cherries or cut pineapple wedges and a paper umbrella, and enjoy!
Adjust the consistency for piña colada mocktails
If necessary, in order to get the blender moving and for overall texture consistency, replace the rum with pineapple juice as necessary, noting that your pineapple coladas will be sweeter.
Also, make sure to check out my Piña Colada Smoothie recipe, which is virgin.
Recipe FAQs
While you can shake a pina colada by shaking together rum, pineapple juice, and cream of coconut, and pouring it over ice that’s not what most of us tend to think of when it comes to a pina colada recipe.
Therefore, I always make my pina coladas in a blender so that they’re perfectly frozen, creamy, refreshing, and they just hit the spot.
Tip: If you are going to make a shaken pina colada, I recommend 1 1/2 to 2 ounces each of rum and pineapple juice, and 1 ounce of cream of coconut, and either shaking it with ice or pouring over ice cubes in a rocks glass.
You want to use white rum in a pina colada. There are tons of white rum on the market. Everything from super cheap to not.
Something middle of the road like white Bacardi is just fine. Although use whatever you like of course!
Do not use spiced rum (Captain Morgan’s) or coconut rum (Malibu) because neither will give you the classic pina colada flavor you’re looking for.
If you’re going to make your pina coladas stronger (see below) and want to add a floater shot, something like a dark rum (Meyer’s) or an aged anejo rum (Brugal, Barcardi) is nice.
For those who tend to avoid pina coladas because they can be on the wimpier side of the scale of cocktails, you can remedy that very easily.
Simply add a floater shot of rum on top of the pina colada after you have it in the glass.
If you are going to add a floater shot, I recommend gold, dark, or anejo rum, which is an aged rum and very smooth.
My recipe for easy pineapple piña coladas in a blender makes a batch. You could probably stretch the yield a bit, but the recipe comfortably serves 4, and less than 4 if your glassware is on the bigger size.
I like to make a batch at once because it’s a little annoying to have to get up and re-blend drinks after already doing it once, but if you’re convinced you need less, then halve the recipe.
Easy Piña Colada Recipe
Equipment
Ingredients
- 6 ounces white rum, or omit for virgin pina coladas
- 6 ounces pineapple juice
- 6 ounces Coco Lopez cream of coconut*
- ½ cup frozen pineapple, preferably from a fresh pineapple that you freeze the chunks, but store bought frozen from a bag is fine
- 4 cups Ice
- Maraschino cherries, optional for garnishing
- Pineapple wedges, optional for garnishing
Instructions
- To the canister of a high speed blender** (See Notes for shaken rather than frozen/blender instructions), add all ingredients (except optional garnishes), and blend on high speed until smooth and creamy, about 1 minute.
- Divide between approximately 4 glasses, optionally garnish with cherries and/or pineapple wedges***, and serve immediately. Pina coladas are best served fresh.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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