Over the past few weeks I’ve been playing around a bit with a new toy, the Heart De Sand Pan Sandwich Shaper.While my kids and I love the adorable heart-shaped sandwiches this shaper makes, there are a few things about it that I definitely do not love so I thought I’d take the time to do a review.
Let’s start with an overview of how this tool works.
The tool consists of two plastic pieces, a lid and a base. These are pretty durable and hefty and they’ve held up well when I’ve run them through the dishwasher.
To make the sandwiches, you’ll need two pieces of bread and some sort of filling. I’ve been using Trader Joe’s Fiber 100% Whole Wheat bread. It’s soft enough to work for the sandwiches, but hippie enough to satisfy me as a mom. Start by putting one of the slices of bread into the base of the shaper.
Then, put the lid on and press down enough to mark the sandwich shapes on the bread. This will show you where to put the sandwich fillings.
Next spread the filling into the center of the sandwiches. I’m using white bean dip here, but I’ve also used peanut butter and jelly. I’ve tried lunch meat and cheese too, but I’ve found that softer fillings work much better. When I took these photos, I was making a bunch of these sandwiches in assembly-line fashion so I’m squeezing the dip on using a ziplock bag with the corner cut off to speed the process up. If I were only making one batch of sandwiches, I would have just spread the filling on with a knife.
Once you’ve got the fillings on the bread, put the second slice of bread on top of the first one.
Then press down as hard as you possibly can with the lid of the shaper.
When you take off the lid, the sandwiches will be sealed and cut.
And in addition to five teeny, tiny, extremely cute sandwiches there will be a crap-load of bread left over. I’m guessing about half the bread I used is sitting there as scraps. Now, I can usually find a way to use scraps — either by tucking them under the shapes I cut out when I put them into the bento box, putting them inside a sandwich or by eating them along with another meal — but this is a lot of awkwardly-shaped bread to use up. So far I’ve been sticking them in a bag in the freezer to grind up into breadcrumbs the next time I make meatloaf or meatballs or something but there is enough leftover here that it makes me reluctant to use this shaper.
Next let’s talk about the price, which is $22.00. I purchased this sandwich cutter with a credit I received as a JBox.com affiliate so in a sense, it was “free” for me. Since I had the credit and there wasn’t much else I wanted to spend it on, I didn’t mind the cost, but if I were paying cash there’s no way I would have spent that much money on this tool. It’s fun and all, but I could get a heck of a lot of other bento goodies for the same amount of money.
So do I recommend this product? It depends. I really, really like the sandwiches it makes and Augie, who’s not usually that keen on bread, eats them up every time. On the other hand, the waste and the price are both pretty high. I guess I come down as neutral on this product.
Disclosure: As I mentioned, I bought this sandwich shaper with affiliate revenue earned by readers making JBox purchases via the links on this site. If you purchase something using the links in this post, I will receive more affiliate revenue and the cycle will continue.
