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These Pineapple Coconut Bars are the perfect tropical dessert recipe. One bite and you’ll feel like you’re sipping a pina colada on your favorite beach!
Check out my easy, light and flavorful Coconut Cream Pie Cupcakes for more tropical tastiness.

Table of Contents
Pineapple Coconut Bars
These bars are absolutely one of my new favorites. Pass me a pan of them and I’ll demolish the whole thing. I love both pineapple and coconut – hello pina coladas! – so these bars are the perfect tropical dessert bar! Plus, they’re from my grandmother’s cookbook, so they’re special. 🙂
I shared these Banana Oatmeal Cookies from my grandmother’s cookbook last year, and they’ve been a big hit. I’ve been wanting to share something else for a while and I finally made these bars.
One of the great things about this cookbook is that it’s actually a little spiral notebook. It’s full of clippings from newspapers, family recipes, recipes from friends – all kinds of things. And so many of them are handwritten by my grandmother onto the pages. She passed away several years ago and I just love going through it.
According to the newspaper clipping where this recipe came from, the recipe was sent in by a Mrs. Gladys Carper of Lefthand, West Virginia. My grandparents lived in West Virginia. These bars were the winners in a West Virginia Black Walnut Festival Cook-off. How fun is that?!
You might be wondering about the black walnut part – the original recipe calls for black walnuts, but I just had regular walnuts, so that’s what I went with. You could certainly use black walnuts if you prefer. Obviously, they are prize winning that way. 🙂
Tips for Making Pina Colada Bars
Despite following a lot of the recipes in this cookbook, I tend to have to play around with the recipes a bit. Because they are such old recipes, they often call for ingredients that we just don’t use as much now. For example, a lot of the cookies call for margarine. Obviously I’ll sub that for butter.
In these bars, the original recipe actually called for pineapple preserves. I’m sure I could probably find pineapple preserves, but I imagine having that kind of thing around was more common in her day than it is in ours. I also didn’t want to end up with a half used jar of pineapple preserves.
So to make it easier for us, I decided to use actual pineapple. I played around with using pineapple chunks and crushed pineapple. I decided I preferred the crushed pineapple because it spread throughout the filling better, as opposed to having huge chunks. But pineapple tidbits or chunks would work too.
Regardless of how you go about adding the pineapple, these bars bake beautifully and are absolutely delicious! I totally died over them. I was SO glad this was the recipe I decided to try. I’m already thinking it’ll be a great recipe to play around with even more to try out other fruits and flavors.
To break down the bars a bit, you have a shortbread crust on the bottom. One of the easiest things to make – I’m a fan. You pre-bake it and then add the filling and bake again. The crust stays nice and firm and is perfect for these bars.
The bulk of the filling consists of the pineapple, coconut, sugar and eggs. It all just gets whisked together, then thickens nicely when baked. The bars stay very, very moist. You can definitely pick the finished bars up and eat them with your hands like any other bar, but you’ll need a napkin. 🙂
They are seriously pineapple coconut bars heaven. I will definitely be making these babies over and over again. They were a hit!
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Pineapple Coconut Bars
- Prep Time: 15 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Total Time: 50 minutes
- Yield: 16-20 Bars
- Category: Dessert
- Method: Oven
- Cuisine: American
Description
These Pineapple Coconut Bars are the perfect tropical dessert recipe. One bite and you’ll feel like you’re sipping a pina colada on your favorite beach!
Ingredients
SHORTBREAD CRUST
- 1/2 cup salted butter, room temperature
- 1 cup all purpose flour
- 1/2 cup sugar
FILLING
- 1 cup sugar
- 2 tbsp all purpose flour
- 1/4 tsp baking powder
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 2 eggs
- 1 1/2 tsp vanilla
- 1/2 – 1 cup chopped walnuts, optional
- 1 1/2 cups flaked coconut
- 20 oz can crushed pineapple, drained
Instructions
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 Bar
- Calories: 207
- Sugar: 16.9 g
- Sodium: 74.8 mg
- Fat: 12 g
- Carbohydrates: 24 g
- Protein: 2.7 g
- Cholesterol: 30.8 mg
Keywords: coconut recipe, pineapple recipe, pineapple dessert, coconut dessert, coconut cookies recipe, easy pina colada recipe, tropical dessert
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Enjoy!
Can this baked be check in the normal manner in the oven to insure its fully baked using a cake tester or is it too moist for that?
A cake tester won’t really work in this case.
Do you still have the photo of this recipe from the notebook? It has Mrs. Carper’s great recipe for preserving children on the same page. I saw it recently on Facebook but couldn’t find your original image on your Facebook page.
You can find that image here.
Hello Lindsay,
This sounds like the perfect little Easter treat to bring along! As with any of your recipes, I can’t wait to make these. How are they the next day if I made them the day before?
Thanks!
Sara
In the original recipe, using preserves, did it call for you to still use all the other “preserve”ingredients? I am thinking the preserves are sweet enough already but not sure how to move forward here. Thanks.
How could I make these gluten free? Suggestion?
Hi…I’m looking forward to trying your recipe but I’m a little confused. How did you get 16-20 bars by using a 9×9 pan as called for….are these mini bars or did you mean to use a 13×9 pan? Thanks for your time.
No, they were made in a 9×9 pan, but perhaps I cut them smaller than you would. Feel free to cut them to the size you prefer. 🙂
Pineapple preserves are easily found in the grocery store. Smuckers makes them. We love them on english muffins. Out of curiosity, what was the measurement if I used preserves?
If you can find the preserves, that’s great! If you’d like to try the original way, just omit the pineapple and sub in 1/2 cup of pineapple preserves. The preserves are spread on top of the crust before adding the coconut mixture.
Not sure which I will do – I like pineapple anyway I can get it! Thanks for the reply. I can’t wait to try this!
Oh my, those Coconut Pineapple bars really are delicious! My husband always “rates” my new recipes and he rated it 5 stars! So easy and wonderful fresh taste.
I might try to put a thin layer of berry jam on the top sometime, just to give it more color.
Thanks for the recipe!!
I’m so glad you enjoyed them! 🙂 The berry addition sounds delicious!