Bee Mine Valentines Bento Box

Happy Valentines Day to you all, I hope your day is filled with love and happiness! Today I'm going to share my last Valentines bento box for this year - the packed lunch which I made for Small Child yesterday. I was brainstorming some new sandwich ideas (watch out for some fun ideas coming soon!), and came up with the idea for the simple bee sandwich that I used in this lunch, which I thought fitted in perfectly with the Valentines theme.

I'll start with the instructions for making the bee sandwich - it's really easy!

First cut out three large circles from bread using a cookie cutter. One of the circles needs to be cut from a different colour/type of bread. Place two circles of contrasting colours together, and cut into 4 equal slices.

Using a heart shaped cookie cutter, cut a heart shape from a tortilla wrap for the wings (if you don't have tortilla wrap, you could also use another type of bread such as naan, pitta or even plain white bread). Cover the other circle of bread with your sandwich filling - it needs to be something fairly sticky in order to hold the sandwich together. I cut a circle of ham using the same cutter I'd used for the bread and spread over some houmous. Pop the heart shape onto the sandwich to form the wings and spread a little more of the sandwich filling over the bottom half of the heart. Take alternate coloured slices of bread from the circle you cut earlier and layer on top to form the sandwich.

Add an edible icing eye, eye pick or small circle cut from cheese to give your bee an eye. Serve up on a plate or in a lunch box as required. You'll have some stripy slices of bread left, so why not make a second bee sandwich for yourself! You could also make multiple smaller versions (they'd be really cute for a children's party) using a smaller circle cutter.

I packed the bee sandwich on top of some lettuce in the large compartment of our Yumbox Panino bento box. On the side I packed strips of raw red pepper and slices of cucumber, which I cut into flowers and hearts using mini bento cutters and decorated with leaf picks and bee picks. I also packed clementine segments and red grapes, topped with alphabet picks spelling out 'BEE MINE' and some raisins, topped with a few strawberry sweets and a mini heart fork.