I’ll be honest: my friends and I took the easy route when it came to the Favorite Food Sandwich Challenge. The challenge is pretty simple: take your favorite, add your two friends’ favs and combine them to make a scrumptious sandwich creation. Since our favorite foods were peanut butter, chocolate, and cereal, it really wasn’t that difficult to make an amazing sandwich

Opportunity Calls  

I heard about the challenge from a friend working at Gonnella Bread over the summer. I’m a fan of Gonnella and their high-quality baked goods, so I figured that making a sandwich with their bread and filling it with some delicious ingredients wouldn’t be too taxing

Step One: The All-Important Bread

butter, cookie, wheat, bread
Theresa Rathslag

 For our sandwich, we stuck with what we knew: plain ol’ whole wheat. In retrospect, using another one of Gonnella’s breads, like their pretzel bread, could have added a salty-sweet flavor and maybe more textural interest if we toasted it. Instead, we took the wheat bread, spread mayo on both sides (a trick I learned from “Chopped” to add more flavor), and toasted it on the grill pan to get those nice charred marks.

Step Two: When In Doubt, Add Chocolate

sweet, chocolate, coffee
Theresa Rathslag

Instead of just breaking up a chocolate bar and plopping it in between two slices of bread, we decided to treat the chocolate as a spread. By microwaving in twenty-second intervals, stirring in between, we melted the chocolate before spreading it on one side of the sandwich. Honestly, I would have been happy eating the “sandwich” just like that­– but we had a challenge to finish

Step Three: When in Doubt…Also Add Peanut Butter 

peanut, cake, butter, milk, peanut butter, chocolate
Theresa Rathslag

This part was straight-forward. Peanut butter went on the half of the sandwich without chocolate. How can a sandwich get any better, you might ask? Stay tuned.

Step Four: The Most Important Meal of the Day

sweet, peanut butter, peanut, milk, chocolate
Theresa Rathslag

No, it’s not dessert (and yes, I’m a firm believer that dessert is a meal). For some crunch and always-necessary extra carbs, we spread a layer of Kashi Go Lean Crunch on one side of the sandwich. We chose smaller pieces that would still add a fun texture without making the sandwich impossible to eat.

The Verdict

toast, sandwich, cake, chocolate, bread
Theresa Rathslag

Our wonderful creation was basically a dessert panini. The salty-sweet peanut butter-chocolate combo was, like always, magic. The pieces of Kashi were the perfect size and were only slightly sweet without being cloying. I’ve got plenty of favorite foods (sweet potato broccoli sandwich anyone?) and lots of bread options, so there’s nothing stopping me from trying this “challenge” again.

Special thanks to Gonnella Bread and the Favorite Food Challenge for encouraging my friends and I to make this delicious sandwich.