Wednesday, October 30, 2013

Homemade Butterfingers

My sisters are not huge chocolate fans.  They like candy, but mostly in the sour varieties or fruit flavored candies.  They just don't love chocolate.  One sister ha even been known to pick chocolate chips out of meringue cookies.  Who removes chocolate chips from their cookies?!?


But one thing that they both really like -- and it contains chocolate! -- are Butterfingers.  Honestly, I don't get it.  Out of all the chocolate containing candies out there, I rank Butterfingers very near the bottom.  But my sisters?  They love them!


So when I came across a recipe for homemade Butterfingers, I knew I had to make them for my sisters!  And better yet, they only call for three ingredients.  Yup, 3!

One of the ingredients is a bit shocking, in my opinion.  Candy corns.  Yup, those tri-colored sugary-sweet Halloween candies.  Well the base of the Butterfingers is even parts peanut butter and candy corns (by weight), melted together, and then cooled.

 

I actually had a hard time finding candy corns.  I found pumpkin spice flavored candy corns, and s'mores candy corns, but I had to go to three stores before I found regular old candy corns!  This time of year, I found that a little shocking!

There are slight differences between the homemade and store-bought Butterfingers.  First of all, the store-bought version lives up to the "crispety" part of their "crispety, crunchy, peanut buttery" flavor whereas the homemade ones lack that crunch.  However, the homemade ones are definitely more peanut buttery than the store-bought versions.

Homemade Butterfingers
From Recipe Boy

Ingredients:

16 ounces (about) peanut butter -- I used 15 ounces, since that's the amount of candy corns I found.  And coincidentally, it was the amount of ounces in the jar of peanut butter.  I guess it was meant to be!
16 ounces (about) candy corn -- I used 15 ounces.  Because after searching high and low for candy corns, I wasn't able to find a big bag of plain ones, just small 5 ounce bags.  But I bought 3.  And then I had 15 ounces of peanut butter AND candy corns, and all was good in the world.
dipping chocolate (like CandyQuik) -- I used the chocolate variety, but they'd probably be good with the vanilla one, too.  And you could dye it orange, which would be cute for Halloween.  But I'll do that another time.

Directions:

Spray a pan lightly with nonstick spray.
Use 9x13-inch for thinner bars, and 7x11-inch if you want thicker bars.  I didn't have a 7 x 11 inch pan, but I wanted thicker bars, so I used a 9 x 9 inch pan.

Melt the peanut butter and the candy corn in a medium saucepan over medium heat, stirring constantly and smashing the candy corn as it heats up and begins to soften, until all of the candy corn are melted and the mixture is smooth (5 to 8 minutes).
Turn the heat down if it seems to be too hot.

Scrape the mixture into your prepared pan and smooth out the top.
Let it sit until it cools off and begins to firm-up.
Once it starts to get firm, use a sharp knife to cut it into bars.  I was going for mini bars (you know how I feel about all things mini), so I got 27 bars (9 by 3, so they're about 3 inches by 1 inch each)
Let it sit in the pan until it is completely cooled off and really firm.
Then cut through again and remove the bars from the pan.

Dip the bars in dipping chocolate, and then let them set on waxed paper or a rack to dry.
Add sprinkles if you'd like!

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