Pineapple delight is the dessert you make the night before and don’t touch again until it’s time to slice it. The refrigerator literally does the work.

Cut into it and you see three layers: a graham cracker crust, a layer of cream cheese, and a whipped topping with pineapple all the way through. A little more pineapple goes into the cream cheese, so you taste it in both soft layers.

A square glass baking dish of pineapple delight topped with crushed graham crackers, with one piece cut out

Read Before You Start

Make sure you let the baked crust cool all the way before anything goes on top of it. Trust me. If your crust is still warm it keeps the layers above it from setting.

Ingredient Notes

The packaged ingredients for pineapple delight lined up on the counter

Use a full-fat block of cream cheese – I’ve found it creates a firmer, more stable layer in my recipe testing.
Since we’re pressing out the liquid, you can use either crushed pineapple in heavy syrup or crushed pineapple in 100% juice. They look exactly the same in the finished dessert and the flavor is only slightly different. The juice is a little more tart, which is why I prefer it, but the heavy syrup version is just as good.
If you can’t find Cool Whip, use my recipe for stabilized whipped cream. Do not substitute heavy whipping cream, as it will not work.

Don’t Miss This Step

Pour the crushed pineapple into a fine mesh sieve and press out as much of the excess liquid as you can. That makes the clumps break apart easily, so the pineapple spreads better when you mix it into both the cream cheese and the whipped topping. Two tablespoons go into the cream cheese layer and the rest into the whipped topping.

Crushed pineapple being pressed with a spoon in a fine mesh sieve to remove the excess liquid

If you skip the pressing, the excess moisture waters down both layers. Juice stirred into the cream cheese layer made its texture awful, so don’t stir any back in.

Serving & Storing

If you want the crust easier to cut, let it sit on the counter for about five minutes first, which softens the butter just enough. Don’t leave it out for more than two hours, or one hour if it’s above 90°F where you’re serving it.

A slice of Pineapple Delight with a graham cracker crust and whipped topping on a white plate, with a fork lifting a piece.

Cover leftover pineapple delight with plastic wrap and keep it in the refrigerator for up to three days. The pineapple releases moisture as the dessert sits, so the layers soften and the texture loosens the longer it’s there.

You can freeze it. Wrap it tightly in plastic wrap, freeze it for up to one month, and thaw it overnight in the refrigerator.

Recipe Test Notes: Last Updated Nov 2026

This recipe was originally posted in July 2021. In March 2026, I had my independent recipe tester, Pam, make the original recipe to see how it holds up in someone else’s kitchen. She found the crust was tricky to cut through. She also told me that she didn’t taste enough pineapple.

Those were the two things I wanted to fix. I ground the graham crackers fine in a food processor and that made a big difference vs using store-bought graham cracker crumbs.

Close-up of a cut piece of pineapple delight showing the graham cracker crust, cream cheese layer and whipped pineapple topping

To get a better pineapple flavor, I pressed the pineapple dry in a fine mesh sieve and split it between the cream cheese layer and the topping, and chilled it overnight.

I also compared pineapple in juice vs pineapple in heavy syrup as well as using one can vs two. The juice and the heavy syrup looked exactly the same, and the flavor was only slightly different: the juice was a little more tart and the heavy syrup a little sweeter. I ended up using one can of pineapple and not adding back any juice. I also found that an eight-hour chill was the best.