Why Frozen Pineapple Is Better Than Fresh When Making Copycat Dole Whip

If there's one food that's synonymous with the Disney parks, perhaps even more so than Mickey Mouse-shaped anything, it's probably the Dole Whip. This frozen treat was birthed in a food lab belonging to the Dole Company, and by the mid-'80s, it was being sold at both Disneyland and Walt Disney World. While Dole Whip is available in grocery stores, too, it's more fun to make it yourself for a DIY Disney experience (mouse ears optional).

Our Disney Dole Whip copycat recipe calls for just four ingredients: vanilla ice cream, vanilla extract, pineapple juice, and frozen pineapple. It's important to note that the pineapple must be frozen, not fresh. As Mashed recipe developer Susan Olayinka explained, "Fresh pineapple wouldn't work as well here because you need a frozen texture to create the Dole Whip." You can see this at work in smoothies, too — using frozen produce makes them thicker.

Of course, if fresh pineapple is what you have on hand, you can absolutely use it in this recipe as long as you freeze it first. Cut off the top and bottom of the pineapple, remove the rind, core it, and chop it into chunks. Spread these chunks out on a baking sheet, stick it in the freezer, and it'll be ready to use or store in a Ziploc-type bag after an hour or two.

While our Dole Whip recipe makes the classic pineapple variety of the treat, Disney World offers a range of other flavors (just check out our ranking). If you want to duplicate any of Disney's whips or experiment with your own, all you need to do is swap out the frozen pineapple in our recipe for another variety of frozen fruit. (Or vegetables, if you really want to try making a kale whip to get your daily dose of superfood — who knows, maybe these could be the new green smoothies.)

One of the best frozen fruits to buy for homemade Dole Whip would be strawberries. Disney World already sells strawberry whips, and Dole even makes a commercial variety. Blackberries, blueberries, and raspberries would also be tasty, as would a bunch of mixed berries. If you use frozen mangoes, you could float a scoop of mango whip in pineapple juice, then add chamoy and Tajín to recreate the Dole Whip mango and chamoy float as sold at Disney World's Aloha Aisle. You could also stick with pineapple but swap out the vanilla ice cream for coconut and the vanilla extract for rum or rum extract to make a piña colada Dole Whip.