DIY Uncrustables - Make Summer Easy and Cheap!

Uncrustables... I have never purchased them, they seemed wasteful to me.  The crust is perfectly fine and in my house you eat your sandwich crust and all, plus seriously if you don't have time to whip your kid up a PB&J you might want to rethink things a bit... It takes 2 minutes to make a PB&J, surely you've got 2 minutes to make your kid lunch?  Well those were my thoughts up until 2 weeks ago at the water park when we discovered they were open later than we expected and the kids wanted to stay and of course we hadn't had dinner yet.  So rather than drag 3 teary-eyed little ones out of the pool I wandered over to the snack shack to see what they had to offer, the pickings were slim:  Nachos (like the 7-11 kind), hotdogs, chicken sandwiches, burgers, all kinds of ice cream, chips and Uncrustables.   I asked to see the label on the Uncrustables and though full of crap they looked to be vegan to me.  So I bit the bullet and shelled out $2 for each of us to have a hockey puck sized frozen PB&J for dinner, and of course it was just my luck the kids loved the darn things!  Something about a frozen PB&J with peanut butter on BOTH sides and a jelly center... IDK I think it makes them feel like they are eating a doughnut or something.  Anyway they ask for them now everytime we go to the pool, after buying them a couple times I said to myself, enough!! I can buy a whole loaf of bread for the price of one of these sandwiches!  So I did some research checked Pinterest and it looks like I'm not the only mom whose kids love these things but thinks they are too expensive.  From my ahem *research* I was able to see that there were two ways of making them yourself, one looks exactly like the Smuckers original Uncrsutables and is made with a tool by Pampered Chef and the other is a different shape but the same basic idea made with a $2 tool found at Walmart, I'll take the budget version thank you!  Having not been in Walmart for a while (we try not to shop there) I was a bit lost trying to find the tool, turns out it's hanging on a strip right next to the PB&J!  So now I'm armed and making sandwiches!  I have found that the sandwiches cut and hold together better with a squishy bread like potato bread, and that bread that has been frozen and thawed tends to rip when pressing them.  So fresh unfrozen squishy bread, spread a circle of peanut butter in the center of both sides of bread and then a bit of jam in the center, put the breads together squish the jam around a bit and then cut and press.

Now I have several dozen of these sammies in my freezer ready to grab and go to the water park or anytime the kids want one.

There are fabulous step-by-step instructions available over at Unsophisticook.com, go check em out! 

Photo Credit:  Unsophisticook.com

I'm making some with chocolate peanut butter too!  Also be sure to check out the croutons recipe at the bottom of this post for a use for all those leftover crusts!