Frozen Piña Colada Recipe

🎶 If you like piña coladas.. and gettin’ caught in the rain 🎶

You know I had to… I mean it’s one of the first things that comes to mind when I hear the name piña colada. The second thing, is sweet & tropical.

There’s just something very beach-y and vacation-like about sipping on a coconut and pineapple flavored drink. A drink that’s blended frozen, so the glass gets all frosty!

This recipe is all you need to whisk your mind away to somewhere warm, breezy and tropical. Even if you’re staying at home this summer because you totally missed the fact that everyone will be traveling this summer after 18 months of some form of lockdown, so everywhere is booked solid. Ahem… not that that’s me or anything 😉

Anyway, enough about my vacation planning fail, let’s get back to the cocktail at hand. I love using frozen pineapple chunks, because you don’t have to add as much ice, which means your drink will be less watered down!

You’ll definitely get plenty of pineapple and coconut flavors in this pina colada, but if you want even more coconut flavor, I’ve shared how you can switch things up a bit!

How to make a piña colada?

This is just an overview; the full ingredients and directions are in the recipe card toward the bottom of this post.

1. Add all ingredients to blender. As a general rule, you want to add liquids first, and the frozen pineapple and ice last. This is for smoother and easier blending.
2. Blend and serve. No really, it’s that easy!

Variations of this recipe

• Lime juice – for a fun little twist, add some lime juice (freshly squeezed is best here), to your blender.
• More coconut – For added coconut flavor, use 5 oz white or gold rum, and 3 oz of coconut rum.
• Different rums – traditionally this cocktail is made with light or white rum, but you can use gold, or even dark… but bear in mind, the dark and/or spiced rums will change the flavor a bit. You can also mix the types of rum, depending on what you have on hand.
• Less sweet – if you prefer your cocktails less sweet, instead of using the cream of coconut, opt for an equal amount of a can of coconut cream (coco lopez is a great brand). I wouldn’t use coconut milk though, it’s not the same thing.
• Rum float – If you’d like to serve these with a rum float, add about 1 oz of gold rum on the top of the frozen pina colada in the serving glass.
• Non alcoholic – to make this drink a virgin or mocktail, substitute the rum with an equal amount of additional pineapple juice.

Making frozen piña coladas ahead of time

I really don’t recommend making this recipe ahead of time, unless you plan to freeze it.

You can blend as directed, then transfer into a large container and freeze.

Then just scoop out some and add it a glass. Within a few minutes, you should have a perfectly slushy cocktail.

Storage

Leftover piña coladas can be frozen in a large container. Due to the alcohol content, it likely won’t freeze solid, but should be icy and slushy-like.