Ice Cream Sandwich Balls

Heheh, okay so the title is a bit misleading :) I didn't really make ice cream sandwich balls - I made sandwich balls, to look like ice cream!

I'd never made sandwich balls before, had never heard of them until a couple of weeks ago when they were posted as an upcoming tutorial on Bento Blog Network. They are exactly what they sound like: bread balls with sandwich filling rolled into the middle. I wanted to try making some to take part in this week's Bento of the Week meme, but wasn't sure any of my picky sproutlets would want to eat them... so I made them for an after-school snack instead of a packed lunch. And since this snack wasn't going anywhere, I decided to have a little fun with it, and made a peanut butter sandwich ball banana split :

I made 3 peanut butter filled sandwich balls - 2 with white bread, 1 with wheat - meant to look like chocolate and vanilla ice cream, but I don't think the bread colour differences show much. I lined a dish with a sliced banana, nestled the sandwich balls between the slices, topped them with little dollops of strawberry jam, grape jelly, more peanut butter, and of course, a bright red cherry on top, held in place with a little green plastic food pick. Love it!

I made a little ice cream cone one for Pickle too:

How To Make Sandwich Balls aka Bread Onigiri
Cut a piece of bread into a circle. Place it on a piece of plastic wrap.  Put a dollop of your desired filling in the center. Squash it into a ball!

 Twist the plastic wrap at the base of the ball to tighten and compress it.  

Unwrap the plastic. Never mind how how messy the bottom looks :)

 Flip the ball over so the messy side doesn't show. 

Admire your lovely round sandwich ball!

That's basically it. Now you can make something with it. 

Or just eat it like a filled donut hole :)

A Hallowe'en lunch that almost Hallowasn't

I wasn't going to bother making Hallowe'en themed lunches. Bella & Beanstalk are having festivities in their classrooms, for which I made oatmeal pumpkin and oatmeal banana muffins, and with other parents contributing food as well, they didn't need lunches today. But then at the last minute I decided to make Pickle, whose class isn't having a party, a Hallowe'en-y peanut butter sandwich after all.

Pickle likes muffins, and I had a mini Hersehy's bar, one of his favourite treats, so I decided to use an Easy Lunchbox for it's separate sections. We're out of yogurt, but I hope having a chocolate treat will make up for that. I made him a haunted house peanut butter sandwich, using the end piece of bread for the roof, with a wee bat and ghost hovering over it. I also cut little tombstone PB sandwich bites to tuck around the chocolate bar. I wrote RIP on one with a toothpick and Hershey's syrup. He may not eat that piece - we'll see :) He snuck a peek while I was packing it and is very excited, says he can't wait until Hallowe'en lunch time! Yay!




Here are some of the muffins I'm sending to the Fall Festival parties:

Bean Sprout & Birdie's lunches are still up in the air :)

Candy Corn Pizza

Oh yes, candy corn pizza! I've been waiting a year to make this, since I saw it in my Ghoulish Goodies cookbook last year! 

Mozzarella, tangy sauce brushed over sharp cheddar, and a mix of cheddar and mozza make the candy corn colours. This is Bella's, with more sunburst cherry tomato "pumpkins" by request, and a clementine Jack O'Lantern, inspired by Lunches Fit For a Kid. Birdie & Sprout have the same thing, except they have only 1 slice, and regular red tomatoes, since they pronounced the golden tomatoes "yut" and "yucky",  respectively. On sight. *sigh* Silly picky sproutlets.  Bella got a few pieces of real candy corn too, but not the little girls, they can't be trusted to eat their lunch before their sweets as Bella can :)

Pickle has candy corn peanut butter sandwiches, made with white wheat, regular wheat, and dark wheat bread sections. I think this came out super cute! I wanted to put a chocolate syrup ghost face on his yogurt but didn't want to push my luck, the dark wheat may be asking enough of him...
Maybe tomorrow :)

I'm starting to get into the Hallowe'en spirit! I've had the porch decorated for Fall for a few weeks now - mostly with leaves, and some sunflowers,  then this past weekend we went to the Pumpkin Patch, and now that our pumpkins are out there waiting to be carved, it looks more Hallowe'en-y than just Fall-ish... time to put up the candy corn and Jack O'Lantern light garlands! 

Here we are at the Pumpkin Patch this past Sunday - sans Beanstalk, who preferred to go to a friend's house - he doesn't like the corn maze or hay ride. The rest of us enjoyed it though! It was a beautiful day too.

The cookbook I got the pizza idea from - a gift from my mom,

 along with this other one full of fun Hallowe'en ideas :)

   

Sea, how cute!

This is one of my favourite bentos so far - but also one of my most time consuming - I think it must have taken me half an hour! Mostly because I didn't plan it in advance - so much time was spent staring at the food I had on hand trying to envision how to use it to create what I had in mind.  Also I did make 2 of everything, but the other Sassy bowl is pink, so I didn't take a photo :)

I knew I wanted to do a sea life theme - I'd seen the adorable wiener crabs in this tutorial from Cute Food For Kids and just HAD to try them. They were so simple too! The faces did take some time to cut out and stick on with pancake syrup and tweezers, but they weren't difficult.

I had some rice stars pre-made (when we have rice left over I use my egg molds to make up a bunch of shapes for the rest of the week) so it was a snap to add a cheese smile to make a starfish. I tried to make the cantaloupe into coral by slicing it and randomly cutting chunks from the slices with half of a flower shaped cutter, then arranging the pieces to look like a tangle of coral reef... hmm... ok. The cucumber seaweed was a last minute trial & error addition - the ones you see here are the 3rd and 4th attempts - the first 2 just didn't work out, so I ate them :) And of course, got to have goldfish crackers in a sea life bento, the girls love goldfish.

It was NOT a bento for a busy morning, but today I had time, and Birdie, Sprout and I all loved how it turned out ♥ 

I made a big mess on the counter too, lots of little scraps, but luckily they were yummy all mixed together for my lunch. Scrap salad, I have that a lot  :)




I won Bento of the Week : Smiles! Thanks to all who voted!

Oh, I almost forgot! Here are Pickle's peanut butter sandwiches!

And I'll let you in on a a bread-saving secret... the sandwich bottoms don't have to look pretty! When using cookie cutters instead of Lunch Punches, I often cut the bottom shapes from the larger scraps, and piece them together. The peanut butter holds them in place and Pickle never even looks underneath :)