Pigs-in-a-Blanket (Disaster)

Back over Super Bowl weekend I had contemplated making Pigs-in-a-Blanket to take to a Super Bowl party my cousin was throwing. I searched the internet for a suitable gluten and dairy free recipe and came up with nothing. I did manage to find one dairy free recipe and was going to try it with a 1-to-1 substitution of a GF flour blend. Well anyhow, after making Guacamole and some Bob's Red Mill brownies, I just ran short on time and decided to skip them especially since the party's hosts were making regular Pigs-in-a-Blanket.

I finally got around to trying to make them this weekend and boy am I glad I didn't try them Super Bowl Sunday! For starters, I hadn't really read the recipe and this one, while claiming to take 25 minutes of prep time (at the top), actually require 25 minutes of prep time spread out over two hours as the dough was proofed and proofed again!

Finally, I was ready to start and rolled out the dough between two sheets of wax paper. I quickly realized I had not added enough flour when the dough stuck to both the top and bottom sheets. I ended up scraping it off the wax paper, then rolling it around the little cocktail franks in my hands constantly adding more GF flour mix to keep it from sticking (too much). As you can see from the photo, some of my earlier ones (on the left) had too much dough and (due to forgetting to add Xanthan gum) sagged a bit around the franks. Most of the later ones (on the right) ended up having pretty narrow bands of dough.

Overall, they tasted ok although the 'blanket' portion was a bit hard. I suspect this hardness could have been due to me cooking them in a toaster oven instead of a regular oven but I'm not sure. I had some as a snack late Sunday night and ate the rest (reheated in the microwave) for lunch on Monday. The dough was softer after being reheated.

I debated calling these an adventure rather than a disaster but after all the trouble I don't think I can even begin to save the recipe, but will instead have to start from scratch trying to put one together. It was certainly a nice treat after 3 years without, but at this point not worth the effort!