Frog Eye Salad

Retro recipes might sometimes appear unusual. And this one may strike you that way as soon as you read its name. Frogeye Salad?! Fortunately, there are no actual frog eyeballs involved, only a few ingredients that combine to create a sweet and creamy dessert salad that is nostalgic yet still relevant today.

So, what’s with the frog eyes? The little spheres of round pasta (more on that in a minute) resemble little frog eyes in the dish, hence the name. Cute, right? And a little odd.Are you thinking that there is pasta in a dessert salad?

I know I was. It is true. This salad has acini de pepe pasta and a few more things you may recognize from ambrosia. So you have little balls of chewy pasta, mandarin oranges, pineapple, marshmallows, and coconut swirled into a delicious pineapple custard. (Of course, there’s Cool Whip. (Would this be a vintage salad without Cool Whip?)

This tastes almost identical to the ambrosia salad my mother has always made (which my sister and I affectionately dubbed marshmallow salad), but with the added advantage of a little spaghetti chew. The “frog eyes” add a unique touch to the dish, but do not overpower the pasta itself.If you can’t locate acini de pepe, pearl couscous will work just as well!

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