Healthier Vegan Butterfinger Bars (Nut-Free, Gluten-Free)

Published byGina Fontana onOctober 28, 2022January 29, 2025 Updated onJanuary 29, 2025

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It’s so easy to make your own Butterfinger Bars at home! These Healthier Vegan Butterfinger Bars are a healthier alternative to one of the most popular candy bars using corn flakes, sunflower seed butter to keep them nut-free, vanilla, molasses, agave syrup, and dairy-free chocolate chips. There is NO CANDY CORN in this recipe to keep this butterfinger candy naturally sweetened and corn syrup free!

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Table of Contents

What Makes My Butterfinger Recipe Different?

Homemade Butterfinger Bars is a pretty popular recipe. I have seen lots of food bloggers creating their own butterfinger recipes. Not only is it easy to make but they’re one of the most popular chocolate candy bars. I’ve seen lots of healthy-ish recipes for making your own at home that are gluten-free, vegan, but my butterfinger recipe is not only those things, but also nut-free making them allergy friendly for people with peanut allergies.

I’m also keeping this chocolate candy treat refined sugar free and using only agave syrup and a tablespoon of molasses as the sweetener. NO CANDY CORN here! You’ll see lots of recipes that say “3-ingredients” but they use candy corn, which is not healthy at all lol.

flatly image of Vegan Butterfinger Bars on a round wire cooling rack, some of the bars sliced in half to reveal the filling

Tips for Making Butterfinger Bars Healthier

Look for a healthier corn flake cereal. The cereal I used only has 3 ingredients, is sweetened with pear juice, is organic, gluten-free, and non-GMO. The other thing to note is mainstream cornflake cereal often has malt flavoring listed in the ingredients. Malt flavor can come from corn, however, it’s not uncommon for malt to come from barley WHICH IS NOT GLUTEN-FREE!
Not sponsored, but because I truly do care about health and helping you make healthier choices, I used the Nature’s Path Corn Flake Cereal 😉

Use Agave Syrup. Agave is a way better option that corn syrup or adding tons of sugar. It’s a natural sweetener and is also wayyyy better than using candy corn as you might have seen in other homemade butterfinger bar recipes (as I mentioned above). Also, using agave has a lower glycemic index compared to other sugars (maple syrup, honey, table sugar, etc.). I specifically like using agave syrup in this recipe as it has a sweeter taste, but also has almost that candy corn flavor making these butterfinger bars just a tad more like the real deal.

Choose unsweetened sunflower seed butter. Some sunflower seed butter contains sugar. For me, it’s way too sweet that way, so I always use unsweetened sunflower seed butter.

Use semi-sweet or dark chocolate chips to keep these chocolate bars dairy-free, but also the sugar on the lower end.

close up of flatly image of Vegan Butterfinger Bars on a round wire cooling rack, some of the bars sliced in half to reveal the filling

How to Make These Butterfinger Bars

This butterfinger recipe seriously is so easy to make, you just have to be a little patient as there is freeze time involved. Do they look and taste identical to the real Butterfinger Bars? No. BUT they will definitely satisfy your craving and again are so much healthier.

First, crush the corn flakes in a gallon bag using a measuring cup or bowl, even a spoon or your hands. You want the pieces pretty small. Alternatively, you can pulse them in a food processor or blender.

Next, whisk together the sunflower seed butter, agave syrup, molasses, pure vanilla extract and salt in a large bowl until smooth. Fold in the cornflakes until they are well coated. Spoon the mixture into an 8×8 parchment-lined baking pan and place in the freezer for 2 hours to overnight. You can add 1 teaspoon of turmeric powder if you’d like for color.

Then slice into bars, squares… whatever shape you’d like and place them back into the freezer. Melt the chocolate chips with coconut oil in the microwave in 30 second intervals until fully melted. Mine took about 1 minute 30 seconds. Stir inbetween heating times because the chocolate chips will melt as stirred. You don’t want to cook the chocolate chips or they won’t be that melty chocolate we want.

Working quickly, remove the sliced bars from the freezer and coat completely in the melted chocolate. If they become too soft and start to break, place them back in the freezer and remove one bar from the freezer at a time coating them in chocolate. Let the excess chocolate drip off and place on a parchment-lined baking sheet. Repeat until all the bars are coated. Place the bars back into the freezer for about 20-30 minutes to set up completely and enjoy! You can cut excess chocolate off the bars if desired. It’s best to keep these bars stored covered in the fridge or freezer as they will soften when at room temperature, and the whole reason why we love butterfinger bars so much is because of that crunch!

three Vegan Butterfinger Bars cut in half stacked on top of one another to reveal the filling

If you’re looking for another healthy-ish candy treat be sure to check out my Pretzel Pumpkin Seed Date Chocolate Clusters!

I hope this chocolate candy bar recipe completely satisfies your Butterfinger craving in a healthier way! Leave a comment below in the comments section, as well as giving it a ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ rating so that others can discover this healthier candy recipe! Tag me on Instagram, Facebook, or Pinterest!