Tiffani Thiessen has your game day menu covered with leftover-friendly pull-apart pigs in a quilt recipe.
“This is a fun take on pigs in a blanket, but to me … much more pleasing to the eye and yummier in the tummy,” the actress, 49, exclusively shares in the latest issue of Us Weekly. The dish is one of many leftover-inspired recipes featured in her new cookbook, Here We Go Again: Recipes and Inspiration to Level Up Your Leftovers, which hit shelves earlier this month.
When putting the recipe together, Thiessen found herself inspired by hot dogs’ versatility and week-long refrigerator life. “Hot dogs keep in the fridge and reheat very easily,” she explained. “So, I thought creating a new spin on a classic [would be] a fun way to repurpose [them].”
She added: “There’s not one person in our house who doesn’t love this — our four dogs even love the fallen scraps!” (Thiessen shares her daughter Harper, 13, and son Holt, 8, with her husband, Brady Smith.)
The pigs in a quilt recipe features several ingredients found in most people’s pantries, including hot dogs, crescent rolls, ketchup, mustard and other dressings. The dish’s flower-shaped design makes it the perfect shareable snack for parties, sporting events and more events.
While most people know Thiessen for her roles on shows in Saved By the Bell, Beverly Hills, 90210, White Collar and more, she is also quite the chef. The Alexa & Katie alum has appeared on and hosted several cooking shows over the years, including Dinner at Tiffani’s and Deliciousness. She released her first cookbook, Pull Up a Chair: Recipes from My Family to Yours, in 2018.
Thiessen passed down her love for cooking to her daughter as she previously joked that the two of them baked “about a hundred” banana breads during the COVID-19 pandemic. “[Harper] just made another one the other night,” she exclusively told Us in July 2020. “She really loves to cook with me.”
Banana bread aside, Thiessen said she and her kids cook “a lot of things” together, often using fruits and vegetables grown in their garden. “We’ve made tomato tarts and grilled pizzas … we’re always constantly making something,” she shared at the time. “It’s been a lot of fun to have them at home and involved in that.”
Keep scrolling to check out Thiessen’s pull-apart pigs in a quilt recipe:
Pull-Apart Pigs in a Quilt
Ingredients
- 4 tbsp unsalted butter
- 4 garlic cloves, minced
- 2 tbsp roughly chopped fresh parsley
- ¼ tsp kosher salt
- All-purpose flour, for dusting
- 2 (8-oz) packages crescent rolls
- 5 hot dogs, each cut into 4 even pieces
- Dressing, ketchup or mustard, for serving (optional)
Instructions
1. Preheat the oven to 375 degrees. Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside.
2. Melt the butter in a small sauté pan over medium heat. When the butter starts to foam, add the garlic, parsley and salt and cook for 1 minute while gently swirling the pan. Remove the pan from the heat and set aside.
3. Spread out one tube of the crescent rolls on a lightly floured work surface. Separate the dough on the perforated lines to form four squares. Stack the squares on top of one another and use a rolling pin to roll the dough into 10 x 12-inch rectangle. Lightly flour your rolling pin if it starts sticking to the dough.
4. Trim the edges of the rectangle so the line are as straight and even as possible. Working along the 10-inch side of the rectangle, slice the dough into five (2-inch-wide) strips. (A ruler comes in handy here.) Then, cut those strips into four (3-inch) pieces. You should now have 20 squares of dough.
5. Add a piece of hot dog to each square so that the flat edge of the hot dog lines up in the top corner of a piece of dough. Roll the hot dog so it is covered in dough and use a little bit of water to form a seal. Pinch the bottom excess dough up against the hot dog to seal that side. You should have a little bundle of dough at one end and the hot dog peeking out the other side. Set the pic in the blanket on the prepared baking sheet, seal side down, and repeat with the remaining pieces of dough and hot dogs.
6. Arrange 12 of the pigs in a blanket in a ring, with the hot dog side facing out. Shingle the remaining eight hot dogs in the center of the ring, so that they rest on the back edge of the pigs in a blanket on the bottom ring (The final shape should look like a flower.) Brush all of the dough with the prepared garlic butter and bake for about 40 minutes. The dough should be golden brown and cooked through. Serve immediately with any desired dipping options.
