Bear-y Pancake Sandwich Bento

Because no- it is 7 am and I was up all night talking to my friend - I can not think of a better title than that. Creative title naming juices are not flowing people. 

Sorry. 

Here is another lovely bear themed bento for you today. You can't really see properly (it was the middle of winter and bad lighting is definitely a killer) but in there is two BEAR YoYo's , some amazing crisps by Ten Acre (review coming at some point), a pot of banana and custard topped with some dairy free chocolate buttons- which were brilliant but they seemed to have stopped doing them. Which is not so brilliant. Do you know how hard it is to find dairy free chocolate chips? (the answer is immensely). There is also a 'pancake sandwich' in there. 

I made a load of apple pancakes and added a load of BEAR Paws and then cooked it in my bear shaped pancake mold to make extra bear-y pancakes!!! Topping pancakes that you are going to pack in your lunchbox can be slightly problematic- because you are, um, packing it. You can't just pour syrup over the whole thing- because you will end up with syrup EVERYWHERE- and that would not be good! So instead I made a pancake sandwich by putting the topping in-between the two pancakes so that it was contained, didn't go everywhere, and wasn't a sticky mess for me to eat. This works better with, thicker 'spreadable' pancake toppings, and did make quite a thick sandwich, so if you are going to do this you might want to make your pancakes a bit thinner than normal. 

When deciding what to fill my sandwich with- I went down the path of "what do bears eat?" I mean, real bears eat fish, but that one was a definite no obviously. Paddington eats marmalade, but I really hate marmalade- and so that one was a no to. How about honey? And peanut butter? So I went with that- a honey and peanut butter bear shaped bear-y pancake sandwich. Yes, that is a mouthful! So how did I do?

1. TIME This bento didn't take me that long- I did it in an advert break. (I don't sit around and watch television all the time guys- it's just that advert breaks seem to be the best time to make a bento time efficiency wise and so if I am going to watch television it's when I will usually make my bento) I didn't make the actual pancakes in that 5 minute slot of course, but they were already made that morning, so when it came to bento making, all I needed to do was make the banana and custard pot (and that really isn't an arduous task) and put it all in, trying to make it look as cute as possible. That means that it fits in the time limits of not taking any longer than it took my Dad to make my brothers lunch, and so one star for me! (Blue please)

3. RECORDING I probably did this bento at about 7pm and it was dark outside. Can we just realise that I did this bento a long time ago and move on, with no stars? Please? The least said about this matter the better. 

6. BOXABILITY I'm not all that happy about how this bento fitted together. There is a lot of empty space in that box- and to be honest- it just doesn't look that bento-y. It's a poor representation of a bento box because it doesn't fit well. So I'll loose a star here. 

8. PLANNING I think I get a star here. I made the pancakes in the morning- with a mind to putting them in my bento so I saved two from the freezer. AND I made sure that we had a banana in that I could use. This is no easy feat in a household where we are not aloud more than one bunch of bananas at a time but where we get through bananas so quickly!!! also- I think we should have two because then we could have one bunch ripening whilst we eat the other- which would solve the problem of the supermarkets only ever having green bananas (I like mine spotty, and my brother only likes them in Dad's banana cake- so really green banana's are not good). But I have now gone way off topic of how I think I should be aloud one star for good planning. 

Which leaves me on no stars :( 

I really need to get onto blogging my bento's when I actually do them... 

Until then, see ya, have a good week!