Crate Training Safety

I 31F am currently a full time stay at home dog mom to my relatively new 7month old bichon puppy. I’ve had her since October and she’s been a blessing and surprisingly easy to train! However our ongoing concern is crate training. I’ve done some cursory research and learned that the best way to crate train is by making positive associations with the crate so that your puppy will want to go in on their own, and I’ve been doing this by making a “puzzle” out of her favorite blanket and some small treats. I’ve been folding up the blanket and sticking the treats in the different folds and she’ll go inside the crate to search for them, which is great since she likes to dig. However today I realized there may be a problem to this method unsupervised. I was sitting next to the crate playing ACNH when my puppy started barking in an agitated manner. I looked to investigate and discovered that she had worked her way into the folds of the blanket that she could not extricate herself from easily. She was struggling and panting so I quickly unwrapped her and got her settled. She’s perfectly fine now, but this is clearly not a safe way to entertain her while she’s unattended. I hate to think what would happen if I hadn’t been here!

All this to say, does anyone with more experience have some safer alternatives for this blanket search that you can leave your pup to unattended? I go back to working in one more week and I want to make sure she’s safe for the few hours neither I or my husband will be home. Any advice is appreciated!