Peanut Butter and Jelly "Gem" Sandwiches
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My niece loves to throw tea parties, and when I'm lucky enough to be invited, I like to make cute little sandwiches for us to eat. The best tea party snacks are tiny, pretty, and yummy, and I met all of those requirements recently with my open-face, peanut-butter-and-jelly "gem" sandwiches. You can't get much more ordinary than good old PB&J, but trust me -- these sandwiches are anything but ordinary!
The cutest part about these sandwiches is the bread, which needs to be in pretty shapes. To accomplish this, you can use regular sandwich bread and cut it into shapes like hearts and flowers with large cookie cutters. Or, you can use one of my favorite oddball pieces of kitchen equipment -- bread mold pans that create loaves shaped like hearts, flowers, and stars. Originally made by Pampered Chef, but no longer part of their product line, these tube pans can now be found by searching on (#ad) Amazon or eBay. You just plop a can of refrigerated bread dough into the tube, bake it, and slice the loaf into adorable little shapes. I prefer these loaves to cookie cutter shapes because each little piece of bread will have a crust all the way around, which makes the sandwich much easier to pick up.
Once you've got your bread ready, take a plastic bag and put a half cup or so of peanut butter in it. Snip the corner of the bag and squeeze the peanut butter out along the edges of the bread, making a nice peanut butter border. (If you want to get even fancier, you can use an icing bag and star-shaped decorating tip).
When all of the sandwiches are outlined, put about a cup of jam (jam works better than jelly) into another bag. Place the bag in the microwave for 10-20 seconds, or until the jam (I used strawberry) is slightly melted and thinned. Snip the corner of the bag and squeeze the jam onto the bread, filling in the peanut butter outline.
Place the finished sandwiches on a pretty platter and serve. The strawberry jam makes them look like sparkling gems, and they taste as good as they look!
These sandwiches are great for parties, or for any occasion when your kids need a little something special. A rainy afternoon or a bad day at school is sure to melt away with some fun PB&J gem sandwiches!
11 comments so far:
that is such a great idea!
This is so cute!! Since I don't have those pans, I would recreate this by using cookie cutters with bread, then toasting it in my toaster oven and decorating with PB&J! You guys (girls) are awesome!
Thanks dot!
Heather, I think toasting would be a great way to get cookie-cutter bread slices firm enough to pick up easily. Good idea :)
Wow, that is pretty cool!
Someone gave me these exact pans last year and I didn't know what to do with them. This is so easy and cute... thank you so much for sharing. I'm off to buy refrigerator dough!
That's awesome, Bethany. You should pull those pans out more often! Kids love 'em, but these bread slices make great hors-d'oeuvres for grown-up parties, too. Just top them with meat or cheese, or use them to scoop up savory dips.
adorable!this willbe perfect for my daughters "alice in wonderland" birthday tea paty.
Hi-I saw this and ordered the pan's right away. I went to buy refrigerated dough and didn't know which kind to purchase. Do you remember which kind you used. I think I had to choose between Italian and french. Thanks so much for the wonderful ideas!!!
Hi Corinne! I think I usually use French, but you would probably be fine with either, assuming they have about the same amount of dough in them. If you plan to make more than one loaf, you might want to do just one first and make sure it's the right amount of dough for the pan. That way you can make a correction if you need to for the rest :)
thanks so much! I love your site-such an exciting find. Keep the ideas going.
So cute I love them