Caramel Chocolate Butter Cake Bars - Foodness Gracious (2024)

Delicious and creamy caramel chocolate butter bars! These are so good and so easy to make.

This post is sponsored by Premier Protein.

I had never experienced butter cake until a few years ago when I visited a well known bbq joint, but I figured that If I love butter and cake then it stands to reason that butter cake would be a total winner!

And I was completely correct. Butter cake has a unique texture. It’s sort of a hybrid of a brownie and a blondie, and can’t be missed with that thin crusty layer on top that covers a creamy custard-like filling and all baked on top of a buttery pastry crust. Butter cake tastes amazing already but I think I elevated the flavor to make this butter cake ten times better than a regular butter cake by adding Premier Protein Caramel Shake and topping the whole dessert with silky dark chocolate chunks.

That’s right, I added caramel protein shake, and it was seriously amazing! Brownies are one of my favorite things to bake in the kitchen but this caramel chocolate butter cake has made me rethink my brownie relationships. This was creamy, buttery and the caramel protein shake could definitely be tasted but wasn’t so overpowering and sweet.

Premier Protein Shakes are beneficial in lots of ways, but being high in protein and ultra low in sugar are two of my favorites. Also at only 160 calories per shake, they make a smart choice for fuel after or even before a workout at the gym. They’re well packaged to manage, so grabbing a chilled one from the fridge is easy but don’t assume they’re just for drinking. You can actually cook and bake with them as another way to get that 30 grams of protein per shake. I usually try to replace another liquid that might be asked for in a recipe with a protein shake and it’s always worked out for me.

Making the caramel chocolate butter cake bars.

You’ll need a stand mixer or hand mixer to get volume into the mixture. It’ll resemble a regular cake mixture or a thick cheesecake batter. You’ll make the base first by combining flour, butter and powdered sugar and pressing that into a 9x13 inch baking pan.

Adding the filing.

Once the butter cake filling has been mixed at high speed for about five minutes and is thick enough to leave a ribbon trace, all that’s left to do is pour it over the pastry base. Spread it out evenly and add your chocolate chunks. I prefer to buy a decent quality chocolate bar and roughly chop it up rather than use store bought chocolate chips that can contain other ingredients and don’t melt as well as the purer chocolate. Aim for a chocolate that’s 72% cacao which is dark but not bitter.

Can I use another flavor of protein shake for my butter bars?

Yes, of course although the caramel is so good!! Any flavor would be awesome although Vanilla and Cookies and Cream would probably be my next favorite choices.

How do I store my butter cake bars?

I recommend keeping them in the fridge in a sealed container. They’ll also be fine at room temperature for a few hours but I prefer the chilled texture that the filling ends up becoming. It’s a little bit like caramel custard flan.