Healthier Butter Finger Bars with an Ingredient you'd NEVER expect to find in a candy bar!

One day last week, my mother-in-law shared Chocolate Covered Katie's "Better"finger Bars recipe on facebook. I quickly pinned it, then proceeded to click on the link every day for 5 days - intrigued, inspired, but also a wee bit iffy. Why? 

Because the recipe calls for Bran Flakes instead of Candy Corn.

I know, right? What are Bran Flakes doing in Butterfinger Bars?! 

The first time that I tried the recipe, I used a gluten free flake cereal that we had in the cupboard - they have kind of a funny 'fake cornflakes' taste - just not quite right - I was counting on the recipe to remove / cover up that funny taste. They turned out well.  After a full 24 hours of setting, the funny taste had all but disappeared. #Win.

Then, when I was out shopping, I picked up a box of Bran Flakes just for these bars. And made another batch - just to see how they'd stack up to the gluten free variety. 

The result was super tasty - and a tiny bit more authentic than the GF bars, but practically the same. Great news for gluten free eaters!  

I always wrestle with whether or not I should republish someone else's recipe when I've made a few changes, and in this case, I don't think that I've made enough changes to warrant publishing the recipe on our blog - please please please head over to Chocolate Covered Katie's blog to check out this - and her many other amazing healthified dessert recipes! 

Here are my notes on this recipe: read them before heading over to her site.

• Katie calls for 1.5 cups of cereal, but based on other reviews I used 2 cups of cereal both times, and I'm happy with 2 cups. 
• I used brown sugar one time, and white sugar the other time, and the result tasted about the same.
• I added 2 Tbsp of ground flax seed when I added the salt, just because.
• Katie says that the bars should be served partially frozen for the optimal "Butterfinger crunch", but I left some out of the freezer for 24 hours and then ate them, and they still had sufficiently satisfying crunch. {It was a hard experiment, but I was willing to make sacrifices and try it. Perhaps you should conduct your own experiment to see what you like best. ;)}
• After I pressed the bars down into the pan, I sprinkled about 1/2 cup of semi-sweet chocolate chips over top and then broiled it for 2-3 minutes. {Don't walk away when doing this! Just trust me here.} Then, using the back of a spoon, I spread the melted chips to cover the bars.  I placed in the freezer until set but not frozen, then took them back out, lifted the parchment paper out of the pan, and sliced the bars up with a very large knife.

Go to Chocolate Covered Katie's Healthy Butterfingers Recipe. This recipe is making it onto the permanent rotation of Christmas Baking Treats in our house.

Rogers is letting me try out the Samsung Galaxy S4 for about a week just for fun, so I thought that I'd use my iPhone to take pics of the first batch, and the Galaxy for the 2nd batch. After I took these photos, I noticed that the 'anti shake' feature in the settings - my photos have been a lot less blurry since then. One of the things that I'm loving about it right now is the voice controlled shutter - I can keep two hands on the phone to hold it steady, or I can take a photo while spreading chocolate with my right hand - just by saying "Cheese!" That is a huge feature, in my books! This is not a sponsored post. It's just my honest opinion thus far in exchange for playing with a different phone.