Tea Sandwich Saturday #6 - Heart Cutouts with Pimiento Cheese

This week, it's all about the bread. I was cleaning out some old files and came across a page I'd torn out of a crafts magazine long, long ago featuring two-tone heart-shaped sandwiches. They're cute, they're easy, and with Valentine's week nearing I figured the time to share this is NOW.

I had planned to use white bread and wheat bread, but the wheat bread I had was such a light color that I decided to use the pumpernickel instead so it would show up better. With each piece of bread I cut out the larger heart first (my cookie cutter was about 2 x 2-1/2 inches), then the smaller heart, then I swapped out the small hearts and they fit into the cutout spaces very easily with no fuss.

Voila, two-tone hearts! Cutters in the shapes of stars, circles and squares would be easy to use this way too, I imagine.

If you don't have a pimiento cheese recipe, I highly, highly recommend Martha Hall Foose's recipe from her book "Screen Doors and Sweet Tea," which is a favorite at my house. She uses homemade mayonnaise and I don't, and I sometimes add some dried onion to the mix, but other than that it's her recipe, and it is just delicious. Of course you can make these sandwiches with any filling you like, but I think a good pimiento cheese sandwich is always a welcome addition to the tea tray!