Healthier homemade butterfinger candy bars with a sneaky ingredient for the crunchy nut-free filling covered in dark chocolate. Vegan and gluten-free!
THIS POST IS SPONSORED BY SUNBUTTER®
As a kid I would’ve traded all my butterfingers for one crunch bar or a couple of kit kats. It wasn’t until after my trick-or-treating career was over that I discovered just how good those peanut crunchy candy bars actually are. And it wasn’t until last week that I discovered just how much BETTER homemade, healthier, nut-free butterfingers are. But I will never go back now.
Just fill your entire plastic pumpkin with nothing but SunButter Butterfingers and it will be the happiest halloween of your life. Or happiest October 24th, why wait?
I’ve seen those butterfinger recipes that mush together candy corn and peanut butter, and my thoughts on that are a) absurd b) an insult to candy corn and c) just please no.
We’ve got much better things going on here and simpler too – just 5 ingredients!
Here’s the thing. Butterfingers need some sort of CRUNCH element inside. Since these are nut-free it’s not going to be peanuts. And since these are refined sugar free it’s not going to be candy corn. And since these are ridiculously easy it’s not going to require making or baking or creating our own crunch. It’s cereal. The answer is cereal.
Any plain (gluten-free if necessary) kind of cereal you like really, but I used crispy brown rice cereal. Emphasis on crispy, the puffed stuff won’t work here it will just get soggy. But crispy rice cereal stays crunchy and blends right into the yummy salty/sweet SunButter center perfectly.
Step 1. Make the filling with a crushed up mix of cereal, SunButter, and maple syrup. Cereal for crunch. SunButter for “nutty” (but nut-free!) flavor. Maple syrup for sweetness.
Step 2. Press into a pan and freeze until firm and easy to slice into bars. You can cut them fun-sized or treat yourself to full-sized DIY butterfingers.
Step 3. Coat the bars in melted dark chocolate. I find it easiest to coat the bottom first, place on a wire rack, cover the top/sides letting the excess drip off, and then use two forks to transfer to a pan lined with wax paper before it hardens onto the rack. But even if the coating comes out messy, chocolate is chocolate and chocolate is good.
True story: I messed up the first round of this recipe by overestimating the capacity of my food processor and not blending the cereal by itself first. So don’t do that unless you are going for a butterfinger/rice crispy treat hybrid (*insert smirk emoji here because that actually sounds low key amazing*).
Kinda unconventional. Mostly healthier. Very easy. Soooooooo irresistible.
If you can make the batch last longer than 3 days, you already have me beat.
SunButter Butterfingers
- Prep Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Total Time: 2 hours 30 minutes
- Yield: 6 bars 1x
- Category: candy
- Method: no bake
- Cuisine: american
Description
Healthier homemade butterfinger candy bars with a sneaky ingredient for the crunchy nut-free filling covered in dark chocolate. Vegan and gluten-free!
Ingredients
- 2/3 cup (170g) No Sugar Added SunButter
- 3 cups (90g) crispy rice cereal
- 1/3 cup (105g) maple syrup
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1 cup (180g) dark chocolate chips
Instructions
- In a food processor, grind the cereal until it resembles a sandy texture with a few chunks.
- Add the SunButter, maple syrup and salt. Process to form a sticky clumpy mixture.
- Press into a loaf pan lined with parchment paper.
- Freeze for 2 hours.
- Remove from the pan and slice into bars.
- Melt the dark chocolate chips.
- Coat each bar in chocolate.
- Refrigerate or freeze until the chocolate is set.
- And eat!
Nutrition
- Serving Size: 1 bar
- Calories: 456
- Sugar: 27g
- Sodium: 140g
- Fat: 31g
- Saturated Fat: 11g
- Carbohydrates: 50g
- Fiber: 8g
- Protein: 9g
Keywords: allergy friendly, candy, cereal, chocolate, dairy-free, easy, halloween, no-bake, nut-free, sunflower seed
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GENIUS! And thank you., Natalie.
Yes it was SUCH a chore to have to taste test all of them myself😂😘
Where’d you get the pan from?! 🙂
Also, have you tried any rice free cereals?
this sounds amazing!
The loaf pan or the sheet pan? The loaf pan that I made the inside in is just cheap from walmart I think, but the sheet pan I put them on after covering in chocolate is from Nordic Ware!
Sometimes lately I wonder if you need to change the name of your blog. Not a bit of fruit insight with this recipe. Your focus seems to have moved from creating healthy fruit sweetened recipes to anything that incorporates your sponsors ingredients. I applauded your creativity and love how your recipes always work out but look forward to some options with more fruit and less focus on things like maple syrup, and chocolate chips
Yep I know I need to change it, just haven’t found the right thing yet😊
Yeah did she get the update on how your rebranding efforts went? I know this post is old, but comments like this are irritating.
I love your blog for its allergy friendly, creative and whimsical approach to easily assembled treats and dishes.
I like high maintenence food with little effort. You do this. All day. Without imitating everyone. As someone who reads a lot of blogs in this genre, you stand out. It’s not a copy paste of everyone else. Xoxoxoxo
★★★★★
Much love Maria❤️❤️
These look so perfect for halloween Natalie! Must give it a try for some guilt-free snacking!
YES!! They disappeared faster than usual, I hope you will try them Hannah🤗
Could you use peanut butter instead of sun butter?
Yes! That will be yummy too 🙂 Same amount!
do you think this would work with chex cereal?
Yes absolutely!