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• How should Sunspire products be stored?
• How is chocolate made?
• What is cocoa butter?
• What is alkalized cocoa?
• What does "blooming" mean in relationship to chocolate?
• What is carob?
• What is the level of caffeine in carob?
• Are Sunspire carob chips dairy-free?
• How are Sunspire products sweetened?
• Which Sunspire products are suitable for people with diabetes or blood sugar management issues?
• What is soy lecithin emulsifier and what does it do?
• What is confectioner's glaze or pure food glaze?
• What is carnuba wax?
• What is beeswax?
• What does "organic" mean on Sunspire products?
• Are Sunspire products certified Kosher?
• Is Sunspire Chocolate "fair trade" certified?

• What does "grain sweetened" mean?
• How are your evaporated cane juice and molasses sweeteners made?
• What is organic sugar?
• What is raw sugar?
• What is turbinado sugar?

For best results, we recommend that you store our chocolate and carob products between 55 and 65 degrees, and make any temperature changes gradually.

Raw cocoa beans are dried and roasted, then they are cracked, and the "nibs" (the center of the cocoa bean) are ground. Using a hydraulic press, the cocoa butter is extracted, leaving a dense, rich, and bitter substance called chocolate liquor. Despite the name, this substance does not contain any alcohol. After drying, the chocolate liquor is ground into powder form. This is unsweetened chocolate.

Cocoa butter is the natural, cream-colored vegetable fat extracted from cocoa beans during the process of making chocolate and cocoa powder. Even though the word "butter" is in its name, it does not contain dairy ingredients of any kind.

Cocoa is available two ways: 1) "natural"; and 2) "alkalized" which is also known as "dutched" or "dutch process." Natural cocoa has nothing added to it and retains its rich, slightly bitter taste. Alkalized or dutched cocoa uses hydroxide to neutralize the acids in the cocoa, producing a less bitter and smoother taste. Both taste profiles are useful and recipes will often specify one type or the other, especially for baked items. For Sunspire products, we use only natural cocoa.

White film sometimes develops on the surface of chocolate and carob products. This is referred to as "blooming." Bloom occurs when temperature extremes cause the natural oil in the chocolate to migrate to the surface where it solidifies. This condition in no way affects the freshness, taste, or quality of the product. Sunspire does not use any additives or artificial stabilizers to prevent blooming.

Carob is a natural fruit that grows on trees in the Mediterranean. It has many natural vitamins and minerals and is a good source of fiber. The pulp of the fruit is used to make carob products. Sunspire's carob is grown in Turkey and Spain, but is processed in the United States. Carob has a naturally sweet and toasty flavor. It is popular with many natural food enthusiasts for use in baked goods. Over the years, it has mistakenly been called an alternative to chocolate. We do not think this is a fair reference point for either item since they have very different taste profiles. So here at Sunspire, chocolate is chocolate and carob is carob.

Carob is a natural fruit and does not contain any caffeine.

We have two kinds of carob chips: 1) Sunspire unsweetened carob chips, which do have dairy ingredients; and 2) Sunspire sweetened carob chips, which do NOT have dairy ingredients.

As part of our mission to make healthier products without refined sugars, additives, or chemicals, we use a variety of all natural sweeteners. Click here for FAQs on sweeteners.

Consumers with blood sugar issues have used several of our products with great success. These include our Grain Sweetened products, our Fruitsource sweetened products and any of our unsweetened products. We recommend that you consult your healthcare practitioner for further guidance before adding these items to your eating plan.

The emulsifier used in our Sunspire and FruitSource confections is derived from soybeans. It is a nutritive food product that produces a creamier texture and keeps the solids in cocoa butter or palm kernel oil from separating out of the finished product.

Confectioner's glaze is a clear, all-natural coating used to protect the quality and taste of several Sunspire candy items. We use a very tiny amount (less than one tenth of 1% of any given item) to seal the candies from air and moisture.

The confectioners glaze used on our confections is food-grade, wax-free natural "Lac." Lac is the generic name of the natural resin gathered by the Lac beetle that thrives on various host trees and shrubs in India, Burma, Indochina, and Siam. The Lac beetle converts the sap of the trees into resin. It is very similar to a bee's production of honey and is called "transferred nectar." The Lac resin is collected, crushed, washed, dried, and made into pure food glaze. The Lac beetle is not harmed in any way.

The coating for our SunDrops contains vegetable wax that comes from the leaves of the Carnuba Palm tree (Coperica Cerifera), which grows in Brazil. The natives there use the various products of the tree for many necessities in their lives, and often call it the "tree of life."

The coating for our SunDrops contains a small amount of beeswax. This substance is excreted by the honeybee while constructing the honeycomb. To extract the beeswax for use, the honeycomb is melted or boiled with water and the crude wax is skimmed off the top. The color is dependent upon things such as the type of flower which gave the pollen and the age of the hive. The crude beeswax is then refined and processed depending on the final usage.

Organic means that all the ingredients are grown, harvested, produced and packaged without chemicals. Sunspire has a dedicated line of organic confections as well as organic chocolate baking chips. Our products are third-party certified organic by QAI. (Quality Assurance International).

Yes. We are certified Kosher by the Orthodox Union, the most widely recognized Kosher certification in the world. This certifies that every ingredient has been inspected and/or approved by a qualified Rabbi from the Orthodox Union. Our products carry the OU-D symbol. As our dairy-free ingredient products are made on equipment that makes dairy ingredient products, the Orthodox Union certifies our products as OU-D.

Our organic cocoa is grown in Central America and parts of South America. It is purchased at premium prices and produced to standards that map very closely to globally defined fair trade practices. Many of the growers who supply us with organic cocoa are members of fair trade coalitions within their own countries. We support the principles of fair trade; however, our products do not have fair trade certification.

Our conventionally grown cocoa comes from all three major cocoa growing regions: Latin America, Africa, and Southeast Asia. We work closely with our chocolate suppliers and stand by their statements that the cocoa in our products is being produced under fair labor conditions.

Further, as members of the World Cocoa Foundation, we have extended our work to directly support the well-being and livelihood of cocoa growers worldwide. Read more about our Caring for Cocoa Communities Program.

As part of our mission to make healthier products without refined sugars, we developed a proprietary grain-based sweetener that allows the true flavor of our chocolate and confections to shine through. This complex carbohydrate is derived from whole grain barley and corn. No chemicals are used and no nutrients are removed. The mixture is first boiled, then dried. It contains natural malt sugars and proteins. This sweetener is NOT like corn syrup. However, if you are allergic to corn, this sweetener would not suitable for you.

Sunspire uses a special blend of dried cane juice and unsulphered molasses to sweeten several of our confections. It is 100% natural, not bleached and does not contain flow agents or other artificial additives. Minimizing processing allows many nutrients and trace minerals to be retained, whereas processed white sugar is highly refined, bleached and entirely stripped of the nutritional value (thus the term "empty calories").

Our cane juice and molasses sweetener starts with raw sugar cane, which is crushed and washed with water. It is then dissolved in water to form a cane juice syrup. This syrup is filtered for impurities, boiled, crystallized, and then put into a centrifuge to separate some of the molasses from the crystals. These crystals are sucrose particles which contain much of the original molasses (the nutritional part of sugar cane). Additional molasses is added back into the cane juice in a patented process called co-crystallization. This combination occurs spontaneously under pressure. No chemicals or additives are used in this process.

Organic sugar is grown, harvested, produced and packaged without any chemicals or pesticides. Sunspire is very proud that our primary source for organic sugar harvests their crop in an environmentally sensitive manner. They do not burn the field before harvesting, which makes harvesting quite difficult, but does make a much cleaner, easier-to-process product. The green cane is then sent to their farmer-owned, state-of-the-art- mill which allows them to provided a lighter color, better tasting, smaller grind sugar that is organically grown and processed entirely at this location.

Organic sugar is produced in five basic stages:

GRINDING: Juice is extracted by grinding the cane stalk between a series of heavy steel rollers.

CLARIFICATION: The juice is filtered using fine mesh screens and a sedimentation tank that allows non-sugar solids to filter through. Lime is used in this step to promote precipitation of solids.

BOILING: The juice is concentrated into a syrup by boiling off water.

CRYSTALLIZATION: Crystals form as boiling is completed, and the crystals are grown in a gently agitated tank while cooling.

SEPARATION: Crystals are separated from more of the remaining molasses using a centrifuge. The resulting crystals are still coated with some of the original molasses, which is the source of the light brown color and fruity flavor of organic sugar (also the source of trace minerals).

Raw sugar is coarse, tan to brown-colored sugar (sucrose) which results from the first processing of cane or beet sugar. True "raw sugar" cannot be sold in the USA because it contains impurities such as soil, mold yeast, bacteria, and wax. When further processed to remove the impurities it is sold as turbinado sugar.

Turbinado sugar is a less refined sugar that has molasses added back in for flavor and color.