The truth about Butterfingers

What gives Butterfingers bars that magical aerated texture? Not cornflakes!

We look forward to Halloween season (which now seems to start in August) because it gives us an excuse to buy those bags of “fun size” candy and pretend they’re somehow healthy because of the smaller form factor even though we eat a ton of them. And Butterfingers (named in the 1920s after baseball fielders who can’t hold onto the ball, perhaps because their hands are already full of candy) are our perennial favorites.

We love Butterfingers for the “crispity, crunchity” centers that aerate the texture so the peanut flavor becomes more pronounced. And we were delighted to discover the secret ingredient in Butterfingers that gives them their unique texture is… corn flakes! This Food Network video tells the story in a mouthwatering way, with lots of fun commentary from the candy makers themselves.

Fun Size Butterfingers bar. Note absence of Nestle logo.

But the truth about Butterfingers is that they no longer contain corn flakes and have not since the brand was acquired from Nestle by Ferrero (the Nutella folks) in 2018.  According to this Today article, the goal in the reformulation was a “richer, creamier taste” along with reducing processed ingredients and trans fats.

So how do they retain their magical texture with the secret ingredient removed? The official Ferraro Foodservice website says the ingredients in the new bars are “corn syrup, sugar, peanuts, vegetable oil (palm kernel and palm oil), peanut flour, nonfat milk, less than 2% of cocoa, milk, salt, soy lecithin, natural flavor, annatto color”. Aha, peanut flour. Just as almond flour can substitute for wheat flour in baking recipes, we suspect the peanut flour is teased into a cornflaky texture.

In any case, Butterfingers still satisfy so fully we’re anointing them the official candy of Burnt My Fingers in spite of some tough competition from Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, Trader Joe’s Peanut Butter Cups and just good old fashioned peanut butter itself.

Pastry Chef Online has an ingenious copycat recipe using cornflakes (as well as candy corn, which pinch hits for corn syrup and molasses) which might be the closest you can come to trying the “old” formulation today. But truthfully we’ve been eating Butterfingers all along and never noticed the changeover. Our bag of “fun size” is gone through research as we wrote this post, so we’ll just have to go out and buy another.