Email to a FriendOur History
We’re chocolate lovers. So our curious minds set us on a mission to learn everything there is to know about chocolate, its fundamental ingredients, and its processing, to help us pinpoint what it was that we loved.
In this process, we uncovered the many biases, economic impositions, and international forces that control the commercial chocolate trade today. The truth is that virtually all retail chocolate is a highly processed food (think American Cheese Food Product...). High-end and low-end chocolates alike are made from ingredients supplied by a handful of chocolate manufacturers who methodically extract all the chemical components of the cacao bean. After heating and cooling, and remixing the fat, cacao solids, emulsifiers, and extra sweeteners (all in proportions they deem appropriate), the resulting "chocolate" product has very specific molecular structures that do not resemble that of the original cacao bean. Not in the slightest.
But what about the virtues of the natural cacao bean? Our search taught us that what we loved the most about chocolate comes from the bean itself. This is no secret in certain areas of the world (Mexico and Central America) and, we found plenty of communities there that still consume natural chocolate made from stone-ground cacao beans, spared from the commercial machine.
In collaboration with our friendly supplier in Mexico, we devised some
simple recipes using their stone-ground cacao and geared them toward conscientious consumers who are inclined toward an
earthy, darker chocolate experience. These recipes feature a minimum of 50% cacao bean mass, yielding a chocolate
that has much less sugar than typical Mexican chocolate, and no added artificial ingredients or dairy products.
The next dilemma was bringing this chocolate to market and sharing it with others without jumping in to the waste-generating paradigm that envelopes most food production and distribution in the US. Thus, our search for packaging that is trashless, yet still suitable for food storage and distribution. This led us to our artisan paper-makers, also in Mexico, who make lovely boxes out of unprocessed natural fibers, with absolutely no chemicals.
Finally, we found domestic suppliers for both our food-worthy cellulose cellophane bags, and the potato-starch wafer paper on which we print all our informational materials.
Are you chocolate curious? An adventurous spirit? or simply one who must eat chocolate? We invite you to join our community of IgnaFire chocolate aficionados.
Incidentally, we market and sell our chocolates under the IgnaFire trademark as a brand. The name of our company is Ignabar, LLC, based in Austin, Texas.