As delicious as it is impressive, this Pineapple Fruit Salad with Honey Vanilla Bean Yogurt Dressing is a beautiful brunch plate!
I’m always looking for beautiful ways to serve fresh fruit. Especially when it comes to a special brunch or more intimate gathering, where I want to take a little more time with the presentation.
This Pineapple Fruit Salad with Honey Vanilla Bean Yogurt Dressing is not only gorgeous with its composition and colors, but it’s also delicious and fun to eat. It’s a statement in fresh fruit if I ever saw one!
* This is a sponsored post, created in partnership with Princess Cruises.
While on our Panama Canal cruise on the Coral Princess, fresh fruit was bountiful. Whether we were eating at the buffet, in a dining room, at the International Cafe (one of our favorite spots!), or in one of the specialty restaurants, the fruit was always excellent, with good variety.
And we found this stunning pineapple fruit salad on the dining room’s breakfast menu the morning we rolled into Costa Rica.
We caught our first views of Costa Rica from our balcony that morning, still in our pajamas. Getting out of bed to watch the day awaken on the water is one of my very favorite things about cruising.
Our ship docked at the port of Limón, Costa Rica’s bustling capital city, on a 125-mile stretch of Caribbean Sea shoreline between Panama and Nicaragua. The scene is lush and tropical, with everything from white sand beaches to dense rainforest to towering mountains.
Meet Buttercup, the founding sloth of the Sloth Sanctuary, rescued as a tiny baby in 1992.
Our family signed up for an excursion to the Sloth Sanctuary, where their mission is the rescue, rehabilitation, research, and release of sloths, while conserving and preserving the sloths’ rainforest habitat.
This Animal Planet Exclusive Sloth Sanctuary excursion is offered only through Princess Cruises, and gives visitors an immersive experience in a small-group setting. If you are booking a Panama Canal cruise and know you want to visit this sanctuary, be sure to sign up online as soon as you possibly can. I know the sanctuary excursions for our cruise were sold out before our ship set sail.
This is Greta, just 4 days old. We met her in the nursery area of the sanctuary. She stole our hearts.
Besides learning in-depth about sloths and seeing them up close, we also enjoyed a peaceful canoe ride on a small river through the lowland rainforest. We spotted a crocodile, a golden orb spider that spun an almost invincible web, frogs, a whole lot of colorful, scurrying crabs, and even a sloth up high in a tree. (Thankfully no snakes were pointed out…I know they were there!) We also saw howler monkeys in the trees alongside the road on the way to the sanctuary. Coming from Minnesota, all of these natural sightings were nothing short of awesome for our family!
I had been to a rainforest before, but it was in Alaska (our first trip with Princess Cruises!), and very different from this one in Costa Rica. I was in complete awe of how tropically lush it is. Everywhere, GREEN.
The little roofed area in the photo above is where we enjoyed a light lunch before the excursion began.
On the bus ride back from the sanctuary, our guide shared with us about locally grown cacao. I had never seen, felt, or tasted cacao in its raw pod form. Little things like this added so much to our cruise experience.
We were not prepared for how much we would really love the Sloth Sanctuary excursion. This day trip turned out to be one of our greatest Panama Canal cruise memories.
Costa Rica has a rich history in plantations, dotting the landscape with enormous fields of banana, coffee, sugar cane, cacao, macadamias, and pineapple.
I picked up a couple Costa Rican grown pineapples, just for this post.
A pineapple fruit salad as pretty as this is normally saved for special occasions, because there is obviously some prep work and plating involved.
But the same flavors can still be easily achieved without the fuss. Simply place fresh cut pineapple, watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew in a small bowl and spoon the honey vanilla bean yogurt dressing over the top. Still pretty. Still delicious.
Pineapple Fruit Salad with Honey Vanilla Bean Yogurt Dressing
Ingredients
- * Please note that I have not included any exact quantities for the fruit. This salad is more of a concept except for the honey vanilla bean yogurt dressing recipe, which I have included. There is enough dressing for at least 12 servings.
for the honey vanilla bean yogurt dressing:
- 2 c. plain yogurt
- 2 T. honey
- ½ tsp. pure vanilla extract
- vanilla bean seeds scraped from half of a vanilla bean
for the pineapple fruit salad:
- fresh whole pineapple rounds cut about 1″ thick (core out the center if desired)
- fresh watermelon cubed
- fresh cantaloupe cubed
- fresh honeydew cubed
- fresh mint leaves for garnish
Instructions
for the honey vanilla bean yogurt dressing:
- In a medium bowl, whisk together all ingredients. Prepare up to two hours prior to serving. Keep refrigerated.
for the pineapple fruit salad:
- Arrange pineapple slices on small plates. Top with cubed watermelon, cantaloupe, and honeydew. Spoon a bit of the dressing over the fruit, or serve the dressing on the side. Garnish with mint leaves.
Notes
Nutrition Information:
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Also be sure to check out our Travel Tips for your Panama Canal Cruise!
For more of our own personal experiences with Princess Cruises (we also visited Alaska!), visit these posts:
- Aloha Protein Balls {Aruba & Eduardo’s Beach Shack}
- Fattoush Salad {Panama Canal Cruise Excursions}
- Travel Tips for your Panama Canal Cruise
- 10 Tips for Planning Your Alaska Cruise
- Cheesy Grilled Crab Quesadillas {Ketchikan, Alaska + Misty Fjords National Monument}
- Homemade Limoncello {Alaska: Tracy Arm Fjord + Sawyer Glacier}
- Crab Bisque {Juneau, Alaska + Mendenhall Glacier}
- Lemon Sorbet with Candied Orange Peel {Skagway, Alaska}
Disclaimer: This trip was sponsored by Princess Cruises. Our family was honored to be guests of Princess Cruises on this cruise to the Panama Canal, and we are grateful for the opportunity to share it all with you. Thank you for supporting us and the brands we so carefully choose to work with. All opinions expressed are our own.
One of these days we need to go on the SAME cruise together!!! This looks delicious!Â
I love how it’s on the pineapples! This looks incredible!
This is such a beautiful presentation and your trip looked amazing!
Beautiful! The perfect summer recipe for sure!
These are so pretty. Great for a light summer meal.
I just want to host a little brunch to serve these salads!Â
I love Costa Rica! Reading through this makes me want to go back!!
Was our first visit, hopefully definitely not our last!!!
What a beautiful adventure…AND a beautiful fruit salad!Â
Yes. And Yes! Thanks Jessie!
What an incredible trip! I’d love to make this journey with my family!!! And your pineapple salad??? Wow, both gorgeous and tasty!
The trip was FANTASTIC. I completely recommend this itinerary. Thanks for the pineapple fruit salad love, Liz. :)Â
What a refreshing and flavorful way to serve fruit!
The ship always had beautiful fruit presentations!!
What a gorgeous way to present fruit, and oh my gosh, the sloths…so fun!
Absolutely perfect brunch material! You would have died over the sloths, so fun to learn about!!
I was following along with your Panama cruise on Instagram. What an amazing experience! I would take this beautiful fruit salad over a slice of cake any day. And that yogurt dressing!
It was such an incredible trip, exceeded our expectations. And the fruit was amazingly beautiful the entire 10 days of this cruise – always perfectly fresh and sweet.
I love this for SO many reasons. First, how gorgeous is that fresh fruit salad? Second, I am trying to plan a trip to Panama, and I know I would be in tropical fruit heaven! Third, who doesn’t love sloths!? Fourth, I will be on a Princess cruise later this year and am SO excited!
WOW. So many reasons that this resonates with you. LOVE it!
hey girl- your trip looks so cool! and the food looks amazing!
The trip was definitely a cool one. And so much good food! Thanks, Shawnna!
This is such a great presentation!
I loved when it was set before me on the ship, knew I needed to make this happen for gatherings at home! Thanks, Dorothy!
I am OBSESSED with this dressing! AND THAT SLOTH. IT IS SO CUTE.
Dying.
Ooooohhhhh, how we fell in love with those baby sloths!!!