Butterfinger Cake A.K.A. The Cake That Will Spark A Stampede To Your Door
Warning: I think I hit more tangents than usual in this post. Recipe is at the bottom if you wanna skip through the interesting tidbits about my family, negative people, my dish envy, and complaints about my kitchen.
Looking over some of my past posts, I noticed I have a habit of going on and on about how I love everything I post. Thing is though, I DO love everything I post. If I didn’t love it, I wouldn’t share the recipes with you because I want you to love everything I post, too!
Alright, now that I’ve gotten that off my chest, let me start posting about this cake by saying: I LOVE THIS CAKE!!! Furthermore, EVERYONE LOVES THIS CAKE!! Grown men swoon for it, Children polish their halos and change their vocabulary to “mother dear” for it. No cake I have ever had in a restaurant holds a candle to THIS one.
THIS is the ultimate in decadence and….guess what else? EASE! This is the easiest cake on earth to make. Never have you stopped a show with so little effort.
This recipe came from my sister in law, Stacey. Stacey married into our family about ten years ago. We kind of feel sorry for her from time to time, being married into our brood and all, but since she had been a guest at my sleepovers as far back as third grade, she clearly came in with her eyes wide open. She has learned to adapt quite well to the vast quantities of food we turn out everytime someone blinks funny and she has resigned herself to the possibility that being married to a Davis is not conducive to making it back to that size zero bikini. She has also done the one thing that we all must do eventually: learn to cook just like Mama.
Stacey is a GREAT cook. Thing is, she didn’t cook at all for the first half of their marriage (she was a working mom). Once she quit her job to raise the spawn of Bill (my two sweet nephews, but spawn of Bill sounds better), she took up cooking and made up for lost time. Now Stacey makes the best fried apple pies in the state and she frequently spends a day making twenty or so full sized cakes for my brother’s catering jobs.
Still, as good a cook as Stacey is, her shining contribution to our family’s good eatin’ will always be The Butterfinger Cake. Did you hear an angelic choir when I said that? Butterfinger Cake. There it was again!
You will need: Devil’s Food Cake Mix (The cheaper the better, we want a good old coarse cake), Can Sweetened Condensed Milk, Caramel Topping, Cool Whip, Butterfinger Bar
My brother, Bill, took these pics and Stacey made the cake. She has such a large, open, bright and sunny kitchen. Not that I’m jealous or anything. I love my 6×8 dungeonesque walk in closet with appliances. Really, I do. ~Sighs~
Prepare cake according to package directions. When it comes out, poke holes all in it with a fork, just like we did on the Elvis Presley cake. Don’t stop til it looks like a swarm of four toothed mosquitoes attacked!
Dang, I didn’t know Stacey had the Fire King 9×13 dish. Those were issued in 2000 and didn’t stay on the market long. I got a bowl, but never the dish. I really want the dish now. 
Pour entire can of sweetened condensed milk and jar of caramel topping into bowl or glass and stir to combine.
You know what negative people need? A BIG OLD BITE of this cake shoved right in their mouth to sweeten them up! When they come up for air, shove another bite in! Hey, come to think of it, if y’all have any negative or grouchy people in your life, you really should make them this cake today. Honestly, surprising them with this cake might just turn them around. It would at the very least cause them to take pause and look at you in a renewed light. Killing folks with kindness really does work. I swear it. I’ve tried it and been successful every single time.
Where was I? Oh yes. While the cake is still hot, pour the caramel/condensed milk all over the top and spread it around evenly. Then let it soak in. Oh my good lord almighty, this is gonna be good.
I had to look at this a minute before I was able to figure out what it was. At first, I thought Stacey had sent me a photograph of a bowl of cereal for some reason.
Sprinkle 3/4 of butterfinger crumbs over cake. Now let it cool a bit. I stick mine in the fridge at this point.
Waiting is really hard because I have got you wanting to eat it real bad at this point, don’t I? Oh just wait, it gets so much better and you have to wait even longer! Oooh, now look whose being negative?
Alright, let me rephrase in a bright and chipper Mary Poppin’s voice “Oh just you wait, although it may still be a while until the cake is ready, the wait will be rewarded with such a delicious delight and you will have earned it through all of your selfless hard work! You’re such a good person for making this!”.
That was better. 
Once it is cooled, top with the whole thing of whipped cream and remaining butterfinger crumbs. Refrigerate. Now, you can eat this now but it really and truly should get good and cold before you do.
Alright so go ahead and eat a bit now if you have to, but just promise me you’ll have another slice once it cools. You may even need to have two or three slices once it is good and cold so you can make sure you are tasting it fully as it would be quite rude to serve something to others which you have not adequately tasted – for their own good, of course.
Ingredients Instructions
Posted by Christy Jordan
on Aug 17 2008. Filed under Cake, Chocolate, Dessert.
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I wanted to tell you that I made this cake again.
I blogged about it on my page if you want to see it.
http://janedoesntblog.blogspot.com/2009/03/butterfinger-cake-and-celebration.html
Thanks so much for this recipe.
It was wonderful!!!!!
I bet this would be even better with homemade caramel and homemade devil’s food cake! Thanks!
OMG This cake is wonderful. Thank you for the great recipes
Wow, that is trailer park cooking at it’s finest! I was trying to figure out what to make for a birthday party this weekend, and here was the answer! Thanks for the recipe and the laughs.
Love, love, love this cake! I’ve been making it for several years, but it is now my birthday cake and my sister or sisters-in law make it for me every year. Around here (KY), it’s known as Holy Cow! cake. Don’t care what you call it – it’s great!!
Hmmm…this does look yummy! I just found your blog button at the bottom of Southern Savers’ blog, and I do enjoy the way that you write. I feel as if I’ve had a nice, little chat with an old friend! Thanks for sharing this yummy recipe!
Making this right now, I’m switching the butterfinger for heath bars! Has anyone else ever done this….this cake is so YUMMY!!!!
i’ve also made it with heath bars and homemade whipped topping and it was called “better than sex cake”!!! and it SO was/is!!!
Hi Christy,
Can I just tell you? You are HILARIOUS. This cake looks DELICIOUS. I love your blog and I’m slowly but surely reading through all your old posts. This is exactly the kind of food I ate growing up, and that my extended famiy eats, and looking through your recipes/pictures makes me think so much of fun times with my family. By the way, I love your tangents as much (if not more) than the actual recipes. Please, more tangents!
I made this for our church lunch and it was a huge hit! We serve a lot of college kiddos and they ate it up – thanks for this wonderful recipe!
I’ve made this cake for years but it was called Chocolate Lover’s Delight and you use Skor Bars on top instead of Butterfingers. Sometimes Skor Bars are hard to find so I just might do a switch-out the next time I make it!! Thanks!!!
I am so excited to make this. My husbands favortire candy bar is the butterfinger. When I found this I knew he would die!! Thanks
His birthday is friday!!
Well I make Butterfinger cake but its NOTHING like this one. And before I give you my recipe I just want to say this cake is exactly like another one I fix called OOEY GOOEY CAKE or BETTER THAN SEX CAKE.
Now the butterfinger cake I make calls for.
1 Angel food cake. I buy it already baked from walmart. Tear it into small pieces and cover the bottom of a cake sized pan.
Take 2 cups of powdered sugar
2 eggs
1/2 cup of butter
it calls for 1 tsp of vanilla but i always us extra of the vanilla and I use a tbsp and also always use about a half a cup extra of the powederd sugar as well.
And one 16 oz container of cool whip. Mix those ingredients together. Hint I always mix everything then add the cool whip makes it easier.
After you get that mixed pour that onto the angel food cake bits this does not make the cake soggy at all ever.
After you do that Take either the big pack of butterfingers or I buy two of the small packs freeze them to make them crush easier and after you get them crushed sprinkle on top of the cake then regrigerate. This is how everyone fixes this here in good ole WV. Some people substitute the 2 eggs for the egg in the box because of the whole health warning and all. But this is Butterfinger cake to me and my whole family loves it and its actually served at a restuarant nearby me for a dessert as well.
Now to the cake you are calling butterfinger cake. I use Chocolate fudge flavored cake mix. Cook it let it cool poke the holes and pour one can of eagles brand condensed milk over it let it soak and then i use about half a jar of the hersheys caramel in a glass jar and the hersheys hot fudge in a glass jar pour about half of each or a lil more whatever you like on top of the cake as well (one at a time of course) NOT MIXED together which it all ends up together. But after that. You let it cool a lil more and use a 16 oz container of cool whip on top of that. It is very good.
Now some take that same recipe and add toffee the candy bars I cant recall the name of them at the moment and instead of the chocolate or you can use chocolate as well and you add that to the top then layer with the cool whip and it is called Better than sex cake. You can google it and it will come up that way as well.
But if anyone tries my way of the Butterfinger cake Because its awesome please let me know. Hope I didnt forget anything. But I have had many people brag on it. Thanks so much!
The candy bars that went on that other cake I was speaking of that people call the Better Than sex cake was heath bars thats used for the toffee.
oh my goodness! I was going to make this cake for my boyfriends birthday.Well that day he dumped he me for some other chick,so i invited all of my roommates goodlooking brothers over to eat it. I darn near got 3 marriage proposals!!!! they loved it! thanks so much for this recipe!
LOL! This has to win some type of award for one of the best comments (and attitudes!) ever!!!
Thank YOU!
Alyssa–
you just made me darn near spit out a nice chunk of Christy’s Strawberry pie reading this!!! Great attitude girl!!!!! LOVE IT!!!
I love this cake! But…when I make mine, I use German Chocolate cake mix. Never had it with devils food. And instead of dirtying up another dish, just pour the caramel and sweetened condensed milk straight out of the jar and can!
I made this cake yesterday. It’s so yummy! I love the caramel gooeyness that seeped down into the cake. Maybe I didn’t do a fantastic job poking it with the fork, but there are parts of it that seem like normal cake, and parts that have lots of caramely stuff. This is a GOOD thing though and makes it even nicer! The only thing I would change is to add more Butterfinger bars next time because I love them. Thanks for the great recipe, Christy!
[...] Butterfinger cake [...]
[...] Butterfinger Cake [...]
I just made this cake and your father’s day menu for our camping trip this weekend! It looks so good! I am telling the kids it is called first day of summer cake! There are 10 of us camping together this weekend and I think the cake will be the hit! You are my go to girl for cooking!
Christy, that looks scrumptious! I would like to point out a teeny tiny little bitty ol’ “proofreading error” I caught, if you don’t mind, ma’am. The recipe at the bottom doesn’t mention the part about sprinkling 3/4 of the crushed Butterfinger Bar over the cake before “frosting” with Cool Whip, then adding the remaining 1/4 as a garnish. I know you accidentally overlooked that step and it IS contained in the tutorial above it. I frequently “copy and paste” your recipes into a document that I save in my “Recipes” folder. I just noticed the omission when I went to do just that. That is not a criticism but is, rather, just a little helpful piece of information. You are sweeter than that Butterfinger Cake, so I hope you don’t think I’m being a grouch, a sourpuss or a Negative Nelly! LOL!
I’ve never had a sweeter error correction, Thank you so much!! I know it took twice as long typing to make it so kind and gentle and You are an angel for doing that!!!
Gratefully,
Christy
Well, I thought I had my mind all made up to make a Blueberry Pound Cake with Lemon Sauce for a fish fry this weekend…but then I saw The Butterfinger Cake! Oh my Lord, it looks so good!! Gotta have it
Thank you Christy!
And as for ‘Anonymous’ posting about the Pizza Rolls, why on God’s green Earth would someone go on a cooking blog named “Southern Plate” anyway?? We are Southerners…we eat GOOD food…not lettuce wraps…LOL..
Anonymous needs to go back to her little corner, and munch on some shredded cardboard.
Love your site!! Thanks again.
Rose,
I have to say that I COMPLETELY agree with you on the pizza rolls posting! My dr. told me today that I need to quit making my homemade fried chicken and bake it instead. I asked him what was the point in that? I’m from TN, I LOVE fried chicken!
now, as for Christy’s Butterfinger Cake….Well, words just CANNOT describe it! My hubby made it once before and he’s making it again tomorrow. He doesn’t like sweets, but he will fight you over this cake. Christy, I can’t wait to see more recipies from you! If you are interested, I have possibly the best fried chicken recipe in 3 states (lol) and bunches of other ones too!
You are making me hungry for fried chicken followed by butterfinger cake!
I have a recipe similar to this the only difference is it calls for skor bars or heath bars and it is called better that sex cake. My husband loves it I hadnt thought of using butterfinger but will next time I make it, it will be even better. Thanks .
Love, love, love this recipe.
My grandma always called it, “Knock Me Naked Cake.” Let me tell you, the first time I brought it to a church potluck, I secretly loved all the little ladies asking me the name of my recipe. Big eyes all around but they ate it up, anyway.
Thanks for the reminder!
I have just subscribed to your site Christy. Still finding my way around. A very unique site and am enjoying it very much. Lots of recipes I want to try. Read the butterfinger cake one and will definitely try it. But I will make my cake from scratch, I simply do not use box mixes for much of anything. Don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with them I just prefer scratch. My little quirk I guess. I will definitely be making this a daily stop!!! I found your site through the Mixing Bowl site. Sooooooo glad I did
happy baking Jo.
Christy,
I made this tonight for my daughter’s swim team banquet. I unfortunately thought I’d get all fancy and make it in a bundt pan. The darn thing stuck like nobody’s business. I just put it in the fridge and hoped for the best. We’ll see if I can get the cool whip to act like glue tomorrow. Thanks for all the recipes. My family loves you for it.
Diane (from New Orleans)
this cake is so good it will make you want to “slay ya’ mama”
keep those recipes comin’
Hi Christy,
Gotta tell you about this. My neighbor, whom you might call a kind of curmudgeon, is very out-spoken and doesn’t mince words. I shared my butterfinger cake with him and his wife. The next day he yelled across the yard, “that’s the best d—- cake I ever ate!” There you have it—the true verdict!.
LOL!! I LOVE IT!!!!!!
do I need to reserve a copy of your cookbook for the Florence signing?
my nieces mother in law made this for her birthday. that taste stayed in my mouth for a long time the cake was a small 1 so our slice was small so i had to google it and i came across ur website and i just want to thank you!! i just hope i can master it
Okay..
Eating a bit of something like this occasionally is fine, of course, and food shouldn’t have to be overwhelmingly healthy all the time.
But you HAVE to admit that this cake, while certainly delicious, is HORRIBLE for you, and if you ate it more than every once in a while, you’d be fat.
You just would be.
~giggle~
I just bought some butterfingers! Its fate LOL
Christy, I cannot wait to try this. In fact I will make it tomorrow. Butterfinger is my favorite candy bar! YUM!
WELL, SHUCKS , CHRISTY,,,
I GAINED 10 IB. JUST READIN” THIS RECIPE ,, HEE-HEE
BUT I”M SURE IT”S GONNA BE OUR FAVORITE CUZ MY HONEY LOVES BUTTER FINGER CANDY BARS — THIS AIN”T DIET FOOD BUT I LOVE IT !!!
I have made this cake for several years now……it’s always a hit!
Same recipe as my mamma’s Heath Bar cake. But, you know, I think I’d like it MUCH better with Butterfingers!! (Plus, they are easier to find that Heath bars now!) Thank you for reminding us of this one since I don’t remember seeing it before!
I make a butterfinger cake just like this. The only difference is we use 2 candy bars.(1 in the devils food cake). YUMMMMMMMMMY!!!!!!!! This is a special occasion cake in our house.
Oh my! Between the Banana Split Cake and this one, my son’s church choir is going to go BONKERS when it’s our turn to bring dessert!!!!
They already lick the pan clean for the first one …. can’t wait to try this one out on them next month!
Thanks again, Christy!
This cake is very popular with my family. The only thing to make it better is to serve homemade butterfinger ice cream with it. Thanks for the reminder…I haven’t made it in a while. Yummmmmm
I made this for the first time tonight …. IT IS FABULOUS!!!!!!!!! =)
So glad to hear you liked it Heather!!
Tell those negative people to suck an EGG!! THIS CAKE SOUNDS INSANELY DELICIOUS & WILL BE MADE THIS WEEKEND & I’m sure consumed this weekend as well, & that’s with my husband & I BOTH on diets. YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE & unless you are eating this cake & ONLY this cake & nothing else…..it’s FINE to have it once in awhile. UGH!! People make me mad!!
[...] candy bars and whipped topping. What’s not to like about all of that? If all of Southern Plate’s recipes turn out this good, this project is going to be [...]
Made this for the church potluck today……very popular!!! My 8 yr old daughter Olivia helped make it and was very proud of it
You now have a huge fan in her because of the stories you’ve read ,Thanks!
Awww, give her a big hug for me. I am so glad to hear that the cake went over so well.
My son and I just made this tonight for his 12th birthday celebration tomorrow. I am NOT a good cook, so I am looking forward to eating and sharing something insanely delicious that we made. This will be my son’s first home-baked birthday cake – he has always insisted on the icky store-bought ones with characters on them. This just may be the turning point for future birthdays!! THANKS.
[...] this cake comes to you from my friend Christy over at Southern Plate. Here’s the link. http://www.southernplate.com/2008/08/butterfinger-cake-aka-cake-that-will.html Christy says angelic choirs sing whenever you say Butterfinger Cake. She is sooo right. [...]
This is gonna be hard to believe…but…this is one recipe…I have…NEVER MADE!!! I know…Iknow…how could a chocoholic like myself never have made this?!! I will soon!
~GASPS~
DEBBIE!!!! OF all the people and all the recipes!! ~looks at you in horror and then faints dead away~
Ever since my doctor told me I have to lose 20% of my weight, I have been struggling to do so…cutting out sugars, anything white, basically anything delicious for a year now! Then I stumbled across this website and decided what the hell, I only have one life to live and I want Christy Jordan in it. So…I bought your book (the Kindle version) and now I can eat deliciously and die happy! Thank the Lord I found you ‘cuz your humor and recipes all make this southern girl’s life worth living.
[...] Porch – In the last couple of weeks I have made the following: The Strawberry cake and the Butterfinger Cake for a few birthdays at work recently. They were such a huge hit! I have been asked by all grade [...]
[...] Butterfinger Cake [...]
Oh My Goodness!! That sounds Sooooo Delish!!!! Om Nom NOM!!
I made this cake and brought it in to share with co-workers. No one could wait until after lunch so we ate the thing at 9am in the morning, which was an hour of waiting that almost killed some of us. Of course it was a huge hit, of course I had to give out the recipe, now everyone wants to know when I will make the next cake, which is amusing. I have told so many people about your website and cookbook, there will be many more of these made. Thanks.
[...] Ronda – Butterfinger cake! [...]