Air fryer peanut butter and jelly roll-up recipe from viral TikTok is a tasty snack for kids

The air fryer, in my humble — but well-informed — opinion, is best-used as tool to reach two distinct ends: perfectly roasting foods and providing convenience. That in mind, I feel a viral recipe for an air-fried PB&J roll-ups is neither convenient nor perfectly roasted. But it is fun and could be a great activity and snack for kids, especially picky eaters.

The PB&J roll-up recipe — which is exactly what it sounds like — provides nothing beyond novelty. You can just make a normal sandwich. However, the recipe from @arimonika on TikTok racked up some 6 million views, which is nothing to sneeze at. People must like it, or at least be intrigued.

Here's what you need to know about making air fryer PB&J rollups.

Ingredients

1 slice of bread
Peanut butter
Jelly
Melted butter or spray oil

Directions

Cut off the crusts of the bread
Roll the bread flat
On one end of the flattened bread — the shorter side — spread a thick line of peanut butter
Plop some jelly on top of the peanut butter
Starting with the PB&J side, roll the bread into a tube shape
Once rolled, pinch the open end of the roll-up to seal it
Cover the roll-up with melted butter or spray
Air fry at around 350 degrees Fahrenheit for about 5 minutes or until golden brown

The details

OK, first things first: @arimonika didn't exactly give the most detailed instructions, so I had to fill in the blanks to remake their creation. There was no cooking time or temp. There was a mystery ingredient that I eventually surmised was butter. Thankfully it's not a difficult recipe. Here's what their final result looked like.

Not difficult. Pretty tasty. But not worth it. Credit: Screenshots: TikTok / @arimonika

Cutting off crusts is simple. (Remember how I said this is a recipe for a picky child.) Rolling the bread is easy. Plopping down PB&J is a breeze. The rolling up? Well the rolling up takes some doing, but it's not difficult, really.

If you're the sort of person who has...recreational interests...rolling up a PB&J might feel familiar. As you roll the bread, you want to make sure you tuck edges inward to keep the sandwich components in place. My closing pinches were awful, likely because I overstuffed the roll-ups but frankly it didn't matter much. Once you butter (or spray) and air fry, the roll-ups harden and became simple to eat.

Flat bread but not flatbread. It's the bread that I rolled out. Credit: Mashable

Once in the air fryer, a few minutes later I had a decent looking roll-up. Granted, @arimonika's result had a more golden brown hue than mine, which I attribute to the use of real butter instead of spray. Still, my end product was a toasty, hot PB&J roll-up. It was relatively tasty — had that whole salty, sweet thing going — not earth-shatteringly good. After all, the upper bounds of a PB&J can only reach limited heights.

Not exactly golden brown, but not having real butter on-hand will do that. Credit: Mashable

But that doesn't mean the roll-ups were worthwhile. Think about it. There is nothing — nothing — different about this than a regular old sandwich. You could just spread some PB&J on bread, toss it in the air fryer, and achieve the same result while skipping four of the eight steps listed above. In fact, that will likely result in a better product because more of the bread will be exposed to the heat and, thus, become crispier.

I'd argue it's hard for a PB&J to be bad. I'd also argue it's difficult for a PB&J to be amazing . A PB&J is the ultimate in convenience. It's sweet, salty, and filling in zero time. I think heating it up with crispy bread and melty peanut butter is worth the effort.

I also think rolling it up is a waste of time. Unless you've got a little kid you need to keep quiet and it's all they want. In that instance, roll away.