There's Technically No Chocolate In Butterfinger, So What Is It?

Let's get one thing straight: Butterfinger is a candy bar, not a chocolate bar and certainly not the fine kind. According to the FCIA (the Fine Chocolate Industry Association, which is a real thing), "fine milk chocolate" is made exclusively from cacao liquor, sugar, cacao butter, milk solids, milk fat, lecithin, and vanilla. Butterfingers contain a lot more ingredients. In fact, while the candy bars made our list of chocolate brands that use the lowest-quality ingredients, they don't contain real chocolate.

Per the Ferrero website, corn syrup is the first ingredient in a Butterfinger, followed by sugar, peanuts, palm oil, peanut flour, nonfat milk, and less than 2% of cocoa, milk, salt, soy lecithin, "natural flavor," and annatto color. So, if Butterfingers contain less than 2% actual cacao...what are they? To answer this, perhaps it's best to start by answering another question: What is chocolate?

Chocolate is made from the seeds of the cacao tree. The cacao percentage determines the final product' flavor, texture, and quality. Per Title 21 of the U.S. FDA Code of Federal Regulations, in order for a treat to be categorized as "milk chocolate," it must contain at least 10% chocolate liquor, 3.39% milkfat, and 12% milk solids by weight of the chocolate. According to the Code of Federal Regulations, "chocolate liquor" must be made from cacao nibs and contain 50% to 60% cacao fat by weight.

With actual chocolate, a low cacao percentage translates into less bitterness, sweeter taste, and smoother texture. But in the case of Butterfinger, that friendly snacking candy clocks in far below the 10%-55% cacao standard for milk chocolate.

An episode of Food Network's "Unwrapped" that explores a Butterfinger manufacturing plant sheds a bit more light on the product. The focus is far more on the candy bar's signature flaky, crispy, orange-hued center than on the coating surrounding it. That peanut butter-based center gets draped in "a waterfall of coating, chocolatey coating, to give us that unique flavor that we need out of a Butterfinger," explains one factory worker. However, this is the only detail provided as far as the "chocolate" part of the equation goes. In fact, "chocolatey" (which doesn't necessary imply the presence of real chocolate) is about as far as the trail seems to lead for Butterifnger.

When Butterfinger changed hands (or, should we say, "fingers"?) from Nestlé to Fererro in 2018, the recipe changed to increase the focus quality ingredients. This apparently did not include dramatic changes to the cacao percentage. However, fans have been enjoying Butterfingers since the 1920s, so something has to be working.