Review: Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates

As you may already know, I've pledged to buy only certified fair-trade chocolate because the conventional chocolate industry utilizes child slavery. Unlike Baby Toolkit's Adrienne and her husband, I can't give up chocolate completely. But the biggest problem I've run into is that it's hard to find fair-trade chocolate that's not a simple bar. For instance, I've already mentioned how happy I was to discover Lake Champlain Organic Fair Trade Unsweetened Cocoa.

I make a lot of chocolate chip cookies, and I've gotten tired of chopping up chocolate bars to make the cookies. So I started hunting online for fair-trade chocolate chips. The only ones that I could find were at Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates. I placed an order on Tuesday, and it arrived yesterday. I bought several pounds of bulk milk chocolate chips, as well as a small package of dark chocolate chips and a small package of peanut butter cups. I've tasted the milk chocolate chips and the peanut butter cups and both are delicious.

In order to minimize shipping costs, I followed their recommendation to call them and discuss the order with Joanne. She was helpful and assured me that my purchase would fit in a USPS priority mail box for $13. That seems like a steep amount of "handling" (it costs $8.95 to ship a flat rate priority mail box), but the chocolate came well-padded with bubble wrap and kraft paper.

If I can find another supplier of fair trade chocolate chips, I would probably buy some just to taste them the next time that I need chocolate chips. But if there isn't another supplier, I'll be happy to buy from Sweet Earth again.