Sausage and cream cheese pinwheels are a savory, easy appetizer for any occasion

Low ingredient, quick-to-make appetizers are great to have in your recipe arsenal for last-minute potlucks, tailgates or parties. And this three-ingredient sausage and cream cheese pinwheel appetizer would make a great addition to your file.

MORE: Sausage puffs are an easy, savory holiday appetizer that evoke nostalgia

Lindsay Conchar of the Life, Love and Sugar blog creates her pinwheels with premade crescent roll dough, sausage and cream cheese. The crescent roll sheet is laid out flat and pinched together to remove the indentations. Cooked sausage is mixed with cream cheese and spread over the entire sheet of dough. After it’s rolled up, the meat and cheese dough log gets refrigerated so it’s easy to cut later into individual pinwheels. Then they are baked and served.

While you may not have heard of this combination, Lindsay says these pinwheels are popular in her area of the southern U.S.

Fellow southern food blogger Jennie of the Diary of a Real Housewife uses the same three ingredients but separates the crescent dough and rolls each one that way. She likes serving hers with coffee and fruit for breakfast.

Nancy at the Bitter Side of Sweet blog makes a version of these pinwheels that uses puff pastry instead of crescent rolls. She uses cheddar instead of cream cheese and adds onion powder and oregano to the sausage mix plus an egg wash on the rolled-up pastry sheets.

You can also swap the sausage for other meat like ham or pepperoni. The Food Charlatan has a crescent roll version of just that and says it makes great campfire cooking too.

Puffed and crescent roll dough can be substituted with tortillas for another spin on cheese and meat pinwheels.

The Bread Booze Bacon blog uses cream cheese plus sausage mixed with garlic, dijon mustard and green onions, all wrapped up in flour tortillas.

For a Mexican pinwheel version, The Cookie Rookie mixed cream cheese, sour cream, salsa, lime juice, taco seasoning, olives, green chilies, shredded cheese, green onions and sausage and rolled the mixture up in tortillas.

If you’re looking for a low-carb version, Mind Over Munch substitutes coconut wraps or low-carb tortillas and mixes smoked salmon, cream cheese, everything bagel seasoning and cucumbers.

Have you ever tried a sausage cream cheese pinwheel of any kind?