Monday, December 30, 2013

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter CupsThis fall Nestle announced it was launching Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups in January 2014. Butterfinger is an iconic American candy bar, combining peanuts and sugar and chocolate. The bar has been adapted into a half a dozen other formats and confections. There’s were Butterfinger BBs, Butterfinger Crisp, Butterfinger Snackerz, Butterfinger Stixx, Butterfinger Bites, Butterfinger Chocolate Bars and even the caffeinated Butterfinger Buzz.

I suppose it was only a matter of time before Nestle decided to take on the cup format and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup. Nestle plans to go big with their launch of the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups, with a full ad campaign including a commercial during the 2014 Superbowl.

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups

There’s a couple of curiosities about these cups. First, they have no paper cups. They are fluted, but there’s no paper liner on the tray in the package.

The second thing is that they’re not round. The circular base is far smaller than the top, which is a rounded square. There’s quite an angle towards the top which means that the ratio of chocolate to filling changes at the perimeter versus the center.

The cups are described simply as Smooth & Crunchy on the package.

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups

The filling is quite salty. There’s a creamy component that is very sweet, then the chunky, crunchy bits of Butterfinger centers. There’s a very strong artificial butter flavor to the whole thing, much stronger than an actual Butterfinger bar.  The chocolate profile itself is overshadowed by the butter flavor of the center, so it’s hard for it to contribute anything other than texture. That said, it’s pretty smooth though sweet. It’s certainly better than the coating on a Butterfinger Bar.

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups

The ingredients are interesting, notably that they’ve removed the artificial colorings from this candy. (Butterfinger Bars have artificial yellow and red food coloring in them.)

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups Ingredients: Milk chocolate (Sugar, chocolate, cocoa butter, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, vanillin), sugar, peanuts, peanut toffee pieces (sugar, corn syrup, partially hydrogenated soybean oil, peanut butter [peanuts, dextrose, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, salt], peanuts, butter, salt, soy lecithin, paprika extract color), fractionated palm kernel oil, partially hydrogenated palm kernel oil, less than 2% of milk, nonfat milk, salt, cocoa butter, hydrogenated palm oil, natural and artificial flavor, hydrogenated rapeseed and cottonseed oil, soy lecithin, soybean oil, TBHQ, annatto and paprika extract color.

Contains milk, soy and peanuts, may contain nuts. No mention of gluten.

The package has the Cocoa Plan logo on the front. This is Nestle’s new initiative to bring sustainable practices to their cocoa growers through education programs. The programs are to help growers use better practices to increase yields, reduce losses as well as creating schools for the children in their communities. It’s an internal program that Nestle operates that does not, as far as I know, have any external audits or benchmarks, though they do also buy from Fairtrade and UTZ certified sources in quantities to match certain products so that they can bear their logo.

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups & Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

There are a lot of similarities between the Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups and the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups. It’s probably not a coincidence. Each cup is .75 ounces, with the package holding two totaling 1.5 ounces.

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups & Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

From the above you can see the long and complicated ingredient list for the Butterfinger Cups. The Reese’s cups are far simpler.

Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups Ingredients: Milk chocolate (sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, nonfat milk, milkfat, lactose, soy lecithin, PGPR), peanuts, sugar, dextrose, salt, TBHQ.

Simpler does not necessarily mean better. Both cups have TBHQ in them, which is a preservative (keeps the peanut oil from getting rancid). But both are rather small in mass for a candy bar these days. A Snickers Bar or Butterfinger Bar is over 2 ounces. These cups are kind of puny.

But in the ingredients list, you’ll notice that the Reese’s have no added oils, no fractionated palm kernel oil or hydrogenated rapeseed oil. But I’ve got to admire the bang for the buck I get with the Butterfinger, it has 20 more calories from fat than the Reese’s. Here’s the comparison of the nutritional panels for both cups:

Butterfinger Reese Comparison

So, the Butterfinger is less salty and just slightly fattier - some of the protein grams of the Reese’s are fat grams in the Butterfinger. This is an odd observation, since the Reese’s Cups I know and love usually have a soft, greasy spot in the center of the chocolate on each cup where the peanut oils have migrated from the peanut butter into the chocolate. As far as I can tell, the Butterfinger Cups are far more stable and consistent.

Nestle Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups & Reese's Peanut Butter Cups

They’re different candies. They share some of their format and the basic flavors but the textural experience is different. I still prefer the Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup, but that’s probably because I’ve grown up with it. I don’t care for the fake, overly sweet butter flavor of the Butterfinger Bar or these Cups. But I do appreciate the variation in the textures. Overall, I usually go for the smaller ingredients list and I prefer my candy to have the innate oils from the flavor ingredients, not added ones. But it’s a good candy and I think they’ll probably last longer than Butterfinger Stixx.

Related Candies

  1. UNREAL #77 Peanut Butter Cups
  2. Trader Joe’s Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter Cups
  3. RM Palmer Giant 1/4 Lb. Peanut Butter Cup
  4. Justin’s Organic Peanut Butter Cups
  5. Nestle Butterfinger Pumpkin
  6. Nestle Butterfinger Snackerz
  7. Head to Head: Clark, Butterfinger & 5th Avenue
  8. Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup Line


Name: Butterfinger Peanut Butter Cups
    RATING:
  • SUPERB
  • YUMMY
  • TASTY
  • WORTH IT
  • TEMPTING
  • PLEASANT
  • BENIGN
  • UNAPPEALING
  • APPALLING
  • INEDIBLE
Brand: Nestle
Place Purchased: Dollar Tree (Torrance)
Price: $.79
Size: 1.5 ounces
Calories per ounce: 153
Categories: Candy, Nestle, Chocolate, Kosher, Peanuts, 7-Worth It, United States, Dollar Tree

POSTED BY Cybele AT 8:54 am Tracker Pixel for Entry     CandyReviewNestleChocolateKosherPeanuts7-Worth ItUnited StatesDollar Tree

Comments
  1. I saw these at a Dollar Tree near my apartment over the weekend, didn’t know it was this new.  Bought a pack and loved them, definitely like the more than the blah normal Reeses.

    Comment by John on 12/30/13 at 1:10 pm #
  2. We tried these the other day- I was really excited to see them at my grocery store.  I was SO disappointed.  They don’t really taste like anything.  Every once in a while you think maybe they taste like a butterfinger, or maybe they taste like a peanut butter cup, but overall they were really lackluster and disappointing. 

    I even dissected one- the chocolate certainly did not taste like chocolate by itself, and the filling was just plain strange.  We love Butterfingers, and were excited to find a product that would maybe reduce the sticky teeth problem we associate with Butterfingers.  These are not that product.  No one in the family would finish the packs I bought.

    Comment by Erika on 12/30/13 at 2:23 pm #
  3. I bought two of the four pack of Butterfiner Peanut Butter cups.  They were totally awesome.  I love them.  When I opened them it was marked PROMO: PB4531.  One gas station sold them buy one get one free.  They other just charged $1.69 each.  That is what I paid.

    They are good.

    Comment by Debbie on 1/13/14 at 7:06 am #
  4. They taste like poopy!
    Anybody better lay a finger on my butterfinger.

    Comment by jorges gonzalez on 1/14/14 at 6:09 pm #
  5. Notice also that the Reese’s have PGPR, a castor bean derrivieative that is used to replace coca butter, thereby making the chocolate cheaper. Hershey’s is putting this into all their products, including premium Cadbury. So cheaper chocolate at premium prices. Makes you want to skip the Hershey’s line altogether.

    Comment by S on 2/26/14 at 8:03 am #
  6. I Love this new candy bar. Enough of the Butterfinger I love and peanut butter I like. Not too sweet as both are separately and doesn’t stick to my teeth. Num!

    Comment by A on 2/27/14 at 4:47 pm #
  7. I love these so do my family and friends,but why are they so hard to find?only place we have found them is at riteaide.want more.

    Comment by Bonita English on 3/25/14 at 5:32 pm #
  8. What stores carry these?

    Comment by Leona J Hage on 4/09/14 at 7:59 am #
  9. LOVE LOVE LOVE these things. I bought 1 pack at the Dollar Store near my home. Ate them in the parking lot and went in and got 5 more packs.

    I continued to buy them every time I went over the last few months, usually 2 or 3 packs at a time. I’m not a sweets person at all usually. I went back today to get more and there were none and told me they did not know when they’d be getting any. ARGH!!!!

    This is a Dollar Store on Power Road in Marion, Illinois. Please see if you can get them to order or be able to order more! As fast as they sold out I evidently am not the only one who enjoys them.

    SO SO SO much better than a Reese’s!

    Great combination and wonderful move on your part Nestles!

    Comment by Joan McCarty on 9/12/14 at 10:36 pm #
  10. I bought a Share pack with 4 cups in it today from Walmart. They were in the front as you check out.
    The price was $1.49!
    It is rather plain tasting to me, very sweet. I did like the crunchy bits. I like the Reese’s Cup much better.

    Comment by Theresa on 10/23/14 at 1:16 pm #
  11. I could definitely taste all that oil in the Butterfinger Cups. After a week of eating See’s Candy, these tasted wretched.

    Comment by The Gourmez on 1/07/16 at 8:09 pm #
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