Your Skillet Is Key To Making The Absolute Best Dessert Tacos

Traditional tacos, filled with meat, veggies, and cheese, are always delicious and make for the perfect dinner — but tacos can also come in handy when your sweet tooth is craving dessert. You've probably heard of dessert tacos before, but you may not know how handy your skillet can be when preparing them. While you could pile sweets into a room-temperature (and somewhat floppy) tortilla and eat it as-is, a crisp shell wrapped around warm fillings is much better, just like with savory tacos.

All you have to do is heat some oil in your skillet, then cook the tortilla in it. You can even add your fillings directly onto the tortilla and fold it while it's still in the skillet (as you might when making a quesadilla). This way, the exterior will become nice and crispy while the fillings will melt, making for a deliciously gooey treat.

Beyond simple pans, other types of skillets also work. If you have an electric griddle (which serves many of the same functions as a skillet), you can use its lid to your advantage with dessert tacos. Fold a tortilla in half, insert your sweet ingredients, then place on the griddle and close it to cook. Again, this process will result in a crispy-on-the-outside yet melty-on-the-inside dessert for you to indulge in.

Now that you know how to use your skillet for dessert tacos, let's talk fillings. You can turn to our Choco Taco-inspired ice cream sandwich recipe for inspiration — the fillings include ice cream and caramel sauce, with chocolate sauce and nuts coating the edges of the crisp shell. You can also choose to drizzle the chocolate and nuts inside of the taco, if you don't want to deal with sticking it on the shell's exterior. Or, simply fill the taco with ice cream and a sprinkle of cinnamon and sugar for a churro-inspired version.

If ice cream is a bit richer than you'd like, you can swap it out for whipped cream — perhaps even homemade honey whipped cream — which would pair well with chopped-up fruit. Some delicious fruit pairings include strawberry and banana, blueberry and mango, or kiwi and pineapple. You can then drizzle hot fudge sauce over the fruit and whipped cream if desired.

For another way to integrate some fruitiness, you can fill the taco with a homemade strawberry compote, along with either ice cream or whipped cream. Or go the s'mores route and fill the tacos with marshmallows and chocolate. Be sure to take advantage of your trusty skillet and melt the 'mallow and chocolate right on top of the tortilla.