Peanut Butter and Jelly Valentine Sandwiches

You ready for a Valentine’s Day treat? These peanut butter and jelly Valentine sandwiches are such an easy and fun way to dress up a lunch for your little ones. They would be a perfect surprise in a packed school lunch. They would be fun to make for a Valentine party at your home or class (just make sure to ask about food allergies). They would even be a wonderful surprise for your spouse or the person you are dating. They’re so simple to make, and I’ll show you how I did it.

The first thing to do is to cut the crusts of your bread. I’m curious if you do this for your kids anyway. I have dug my heels in not wanting to cut the crusts off. However, they won’t eat them anyway, and I’m wondering if I could maximize the part of the bread they will eat and use the crust for breadcrumbs, therefore creating less waste. I’ve never wanted to cater to my kids like this, but maybe that’s an ideal I created that isn’t really being as responsible as I could be with my products. Love to hear your thoughts and input on that. I love how my mom “ideals” don’t always match what happens when you really become a mom. It reminds me of the article I posted lasted we “I Used to Be a Super Mom.” I need to pick my battles, and this is a minor one I just shouldn’t push. Love to hear your feedback.

I cut up a bunch of bread squares. I just eye balled these. You could measure them or use a cookie cutter to make them perfectly square. I’m a little less Martha Stewart in my approach – “Ain’t Nobody Got Time for Dat.”

I used my little heart cookie cutter to cut out the center of the top half of the bread pieces.

Now you have your peek-a-boo top piece of bread so you can see the red jelly exposed and create the whole Valentine look.

Of course, you need your peanut butter and jelly on hand to put on your Valentine sandwiches.

You spread down the peanut butter first and then layer the jelly on top. This is probably pretty obvious, but I like to make my blog about tutorials because not everyone just sees it.

You now have these wonderful little peanut butter and jelly Valentine sandwiches. I do have to share the ironic part of this post. I really should have taken a picture. My kids were kind of a mess the day I served these. It was the first day back at school and no one had gotten the sleep they needed. So, these sandwiches were met by two kids absolutely a mess andfalling apart. Lunch was a smoothie and these sandwiches. They both got in their mind that peanut butter and jelly sandwiches were not what they wanted, and they were completely offended that it was what was served. Tears. Anger. Glaring eyes. The funny part is that I said they didn’t NEED to eat the sandwiches, but I wouldn’t be making anything else. So, after smoothies you can just imagine that the kids had nice, long quiet times in their rooms. In my ideal world, my kids would nap when they were such a mess, but that’s not how they roll, so quiet time just had to suffice. These kids were not feeling the love that day…and neither was I.