Do you like Butterfinger candy bars? If you say no, then we can’t be friends anymore.
I happen to love Butterfingers!
These homemade Butterfinger Bars were so easy. Almost a little too easy, if you know what I mean.
With 3 ingredients
And in 3 minutes
They were done
First ingredient: Candy Corn. If you have leftover candy corn from Halloween or a surplus that’s just burning a hole in your cupboard, you can use it to make these.
Or you can make Candy Corn Cookie Dough Pretzel Bites, too.
Second ingredient: Peanut Butter. Everyone has this. I know there’s no shortage of nut butter in the cupboards of bloggers and blog readers.
Third ingredient: Chocolate chips. Everyone has these, especially if you read my blog.
Now everyone can have these.
They’re so easy and spot on with the flavor of real Butterfingers that these are dangerous. I’m not even kidding.
I’ve always wished I could just have Butterfinger centers. Fold back the chocolate and just get to that flaky-textured, peanut buttery-flavored orange stuff. I’ve also wished I could duplicate just that orange stuff at home.
And now I have.
Butterfinger Bars (Vegan, Gluten Free Options)
1 c candy corn (to keep vegan use Vegan Candy Corn or make your own homemade vegan candy corn – there are tons of recipes online, google it)
1/3 c peanut butter
3/4 c chocolate chips, for the top layer
Directions:
Line a small baking dish with aluminum foil, parchment, or plastic wrap. Make sure you have this ready to go. (I used a 5 x 5 Gladware plastic container meant for leftovers that I lined with foil and also sprayed with cooking spray)
In a microwave safe bowl, melt the candy corn. This will go fast. Approximately 30 seconds (50-60 seconds, max).
Have your peanut butter waiting on a big spoon and the second you take the candy corn out of the microwave, stir in the peanut butter. If it hardens up on you too fast, place mixture back into the microwave for 10 seconds or so, until you can stir it to be smooth.
Take your smooth mixture and put it into your baking dish, pushing it down with a spoon or your hands. Work quickly. Place this into the freezer.
Next, melt your chocolate chips. If you want more/less of a chocolate layer, use more/less chips.
Remove the baking dish from the freezer, pour melted chocolate over it. Place in freezer and allow to set up for 10 minutes or so, slice & enjoy.
Tips:
Spray your microwave-safe bowl with cooking spray before you add the candy corn and begin microwaving and melting it. It will dramatically help with cleanup.
Line your baking dish with aluminum foil, parchment, or plastic wrap. It will dramatically help with cleanup.
Double or triple the recipe as needed in a 1:3 ratio, i.e. 1 cup Peanut Butter to 3 cups candy corn, and use a 8 x 8 baking dish or similar.
You could make Butterfinger Truffles by cutting squares or rectangles with a knife or pizza cutter of the hardened orange mixture, and then submerging those into a chocolate bath. I personally did not need the entire bar coated in chocolate because it’s quite rich just having chocolate on one side, but to each her own.
Here was my Gladware container that I made them in. First I poured down the orange layer, and let that cool. Then I poured down the chocolate layer and let that cool. Sliced and ate.
Tastes.just.like.a.real.Butterfinger
It’s unreal how close the candy corn + PB mixture approximates the taste of that orange Butterfinger center we’ve all come to know and love.
Or that I have come to know and love.
In terms of texture, they also have that flaky crisp and crunch like store-bought Butterfingers. And boy, did those flakes ever make for plenty of photography out-takes. Note to self: flaking candy bars are not easy to work with.
The homemade bars have a slight degree of chewiness to the orange center. Not much more than store-bought Buttefingers, but just a tiny bit of extra chew, which I enjoyed.
And even if you’re not a candy corn fan, the bars don’t taste like candy corn. They taste like Butterfingers!
Because I used semi-sweet chocolate chips, the chocolate is darker and richer on the homemade Butterfingers bars compared to store bought, which have more of a milk chocolate coating. I prefer dark to milk chocolate, any day.
I also opted to just keep the chocolate on top, rather than dunking the entire thing into a chocolate bath. You could, but these were plenty rich with just chocolate on one side, and that’s saying something especially coming from me.
And as I said in the recipe portion, you could also make the orange pieces smaller and dip or fully coat them witth chocolate, thereby making Butterfinger “Truffles”
These are my take on Butterfinger Mini’s.
These are so easy. Go on, make some. I know you’ve got candy corn lurking in your cabinets, and if you don’t, go buy some just to make these.
Questions:
1. Do you like Butterfinger candy bars?
You could of course just buy Butterfingers, but then you wouldn’t get to re-invent the wheel but that would take the fun out of wondering what to do with leftover candy corn.
The other nice thing is that you control what goes into these. You know what ingredients are going in, so in a roundabout way, somehow they are probably better for you than storebought Butterfingers. You know, because candy bars of any type are good for you and all, right?
2. What do you do with your leftover Halloween candy?
I’ve seen chocolate bark that’s sort of a candy bar dumping grounds, i.e. throw in bits of Snickers and Milky Way hunks, add M & M’s and gummi bears, whatever you have on hand, add it all to melted chocolate, spread on a sheet pan, and create a candy bark smorgasboard with your leftover candy. Any type of flavor combo goes.
I’ve also seen the same principle but applied to popcorn. Popcorn, plus candy bar odds and ends are added, then a caramel mixture is made and poured over it, bake it all in the oven for 10-20 minutes, and candy bar infused caramel corn is born.
Nothing like a few low-sugar recipes, eh? Just go to Pinterest and if you need ideas. Prepare to drool.
3. Halloween Plans?
Be safe and have fun. Those are the two golden rules.
My plans involve this
Need other homemade candy recipes?
Candy Corn Cookie Dough Pretzel Bites (No Bake)
Raw Vegan Peanut Butter Cups
White Chocolate Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
No-Bake Vegan Chocolate “Turtles”
No-Bake Vegan “Peppermint Patties”
And if you have one spare second, could you please Vote for Me in the Delta/Biscoff Bake-Off. Thank you! I really appreciate it.
I made these but the texture was completely off. Any idea why? Were very soft.
Very soft would tend to indicate your mixture did not get hot enough when you melted it (same principle applies to making caramel for example…thru the continuum of sauce to chewy candy to toffee to brittle – the hotter it becomes, the harder the finish product will be). Maybe micro it an extra 10-15 secs or so.
Also try a different brand of candy corn.
If you want a break from the chocolate coating (did I really type that???), try a Zagnut bar. It is an ‘old-school’ candy that can be found at Michaels (yes, the craft store) or Cracker Barrel. It is a bar of just the awesomeness that is the center of a Butterfinger bar.
That being said, I cannot wait to make these. I love candy corn and always have a bag hanging around now that Fall is around the corner.
I LOVE Butterfingers. I can’t believe candy corn is in it…wow! I’ll definitely try this some time.
I LOVE your recipes! Have been ‘stuck’ here for the last 15 minutes cause I keep seeing something else I want to know more about. Awesome! I love butterfingers.
So glad I’ve kept you stuck :)
I love candy corn, although they are sickeningly sweet! Maybe it’s just because I keep eating until they make me sick! LOL! But cutting that sweetness with peanut butter and adding chocolate! What a great combo! Pinned and waiting to pickup some candy corn! If I would have known I would need it, maybe I wouldn’t have eaten it until it make me sick! Thank you!
I can’t eat more than a handful or two before I feel the same way. Cutting them with the PB & Choc like you said is really great and the recipe tastes SO CLOSE to real BF’s. It’s crazy, actually!
AH! Now I have to wait 10 months for candy corn to pop back on the shelves before making these. Dammit- I knew I should have stocked up this halloween :) I can’t believe you can melt candy corn, who knew? Excited to try these someday.
Oh it’s around. Go to a Walgreens, Rite-Aid, or look in the candy section of a large grocery store – poke around and you’ll find some. Like my drug stores have these small bags of real cheapie candy, 2 small bags for 2 bucks type thing. Worth a try!
Hi Averie! WONDERFUL recipe- three of my fav. treats in one! THANK YOU for sharing! :) Love your blog!!!! I made this over the weekend (Brach’s candy corn, natural PB and Hershey’s Special Dark chocolate morsels) and it was a big hit!
Margo thanks for the feedback and glad they turned out to be such a hit! Thanks for coming back to tell me about it and for reading and nice compliments :)
Oh, yes. This is *just* what I’ve been searching for. An amazingly fantastic (but easy to make) goody recipe for bringing to work on Halloween! Thank you!
Do these bars need to stay frozen, to keep firm? Or can they be kept at room temperature after they firm up and are cut?
They stay extremely firm at room temp – almost too much so IF you overcook the sugar. Be extra careful when heating it in the microwave b/c too long can turn it the finished bars harder/firmer than you want if you let the sugar get too hot. Just keep a watchful eye on the boiling process so when it’s all poured and then sets up, it doesn’t set up TOO firm. You will not lack for firmness in this recipe! Enjoy!
Thanks, Averie! I doubled this recipe, but cut them up like bark, instead of into bars. I called it Halloween Crack, haha! It was a huge hit. Thanks for the recipe!
Glad it was a success! I have wanted to double it too and pour it in a sheet pan or similar and then just frost it like bark. Glad to know that worked and they were a hit!
Love this idea! I figured hey three ingredient and three minutes I can’t screw this up, wrong. Hard as a rock! Now, I’m the type of person to follow a recipe exactly. The candy corn was bubbling after twenty seconds or so but not all of them were melted. did I just cook it to long? I want to try again but could you please explain why mine turned into a brick? I love the flaky aspect but I don’t get the whole hard ball , soft ball thing. Thanks.
If it’s hard as a rock, yes, it’s overcooked. All microwaves vary widely and if yours was melted in 20 seconds, then probably around that time you should have stopped cooking it. You are making candy, in the microwave. The hotter you allow the internal temperature of the mixture to become, the harder/more rock-like the resulting candy will be. So reduce the cooking time, cook until melted, and then stop cooking it and I think that will do the trick!
Thank you for giving me an excuse to buy candy corn! :P Area Gladware containers typically oven-safe? I don’t know if mine are and the package is long gone.
Oven-safe?! What was I talking about…?
Anyway, I just made these for Sweetest Day, and I’ll probably save some for my sister’s birthday this weekend :) thanks again for sharing a great recipe!
Glad you tried them and that they were a hit and good luck saving a few for your sis’s bday :)