Entering Señor Murphy Candymaker's production facility and retail outlet on Chamisa Street just weeks before Easter is a sure-fire way to test any true sweet tooth's level of self-restraint: Huge, glistening chocolate bunnies commanded prime counter space near the front door. The transfixing aroma of sweet almonds, pecans, caramel and chocolate permeated every inch of the room.

In one corner of the facility, production manager Pauline Tapia and Greta Young, who have worked for Señor Murphy Candymaker a combined 65 years, made bolitas — soft, rich orbs of artisan fudge hand-enrobed in dark chocolate — and then rolled in chopped almonds. This is either the best job in the world, I thought to myself, or a perpetual state of self-imposed temptation. It's probably a bit of both.

I wish I could tell you that my reason for visiting the facility was to perform a thorough tasting of every morsel in sight, but that will have to wait for another day. More pressing matters were on the menu this time. I arrived at the invitation of Sebia Hawkins, director of development for the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, and Señor Murphy Candymaker's general manager, Katie Zemlick. In December 2008, the local confectioner and the law center launched the Justice Bar, a delicious trio of certified organic, fair-trade chocolate bars developed over a six-month period, to serve as a fundraising tool for the 22-year-old law center.

Like many sweet ideas, the Justice Bar was hatched after a series of person-to-person encounters — in this case, conversations involving Hawkins, Zemlick, Señor Murphy co-owner Rand Levitt, and a glassmaker, to name a few. But why a candy bar, and why Señor Murphy?

"Well," Hawkins said, laughing, "we had admittedly done quite a bit of tasting already. I've been giving Señor Murphy candy as a gift and eating it for years, and the company has a history of supporting New Mexico businesses and nonprofits. If we were going to do this, the final product had to reflect the sense of community and environmental stewardship that the law center has promoted and protected for more than two decades. It was a perfect fit."

The candy makers walk their talk, too: Katie Zemlick is interning at the law center and may pursue a career in law down the road — talk about sweet justice.

Early in the product-development stage, the law center and the candy maker began seeking out food sources that echoed their shared philosophy of community-driven and fair-trade production practices. Organic certification doesn't come cheap, but with some determination and a little direction from the Slow Money movement, the Justice Bar earned its certifications. The bars sell for $6 apiece, and while it's not the cheapest confection in town, it's a solid investment in sustainability. "We're banking on the fact that, especially these days, many people are more motivated to purchase on principle," said law center communications and public-education associate Juana Colón. "The cacao farmers we utilize are being paid a fair wage for their products and services, and they aren't being forced to work with dangerous pesticides. Keeping track of all of those purveyors and their standards requires jumping through a lot of hoops. In the end, you get a product that costs a bit more, but that makes perfect sense, even in a struggling economy. This entire process helps real people. That's the whole point."

For their red chile-pistachio-dark-chocolate bar, they brought in authentic Chimayó red-chile powder, as well as pistachios grown at Alamogordo's Eagle Ranch Farms. Old Montecillo Organic Farms near Truth or Consequences provides the organic mint for the dark chocolate-mint bar. Organic pecans from Mesilla Valley give the milk-chocolate bar its sweet, nutty crunch. All of the chocolate, sourced from Sweet Earth Organic Chocolates in San Luis Obispo, Calif., is fair-trade certified.

"Every one of our product sources has been extremely generous with this project," Colón said. "The mint and pecans are being provided at cost, and the bulk chocolate is provided at a discount to nonprofits."

The Justice Bar's ties to local and regional businesses and individuals don't end with the ingredient list. Both the candy makers and the law center knew that the marketing of the product was just as essential to its success as its flavors were. This might be the center's first encounter with a retail model, but they did their homework when putting a face to the final product. Three different landscape photographs that grace the individual candy-bar wrappers were donated by Santa Fe photographer John Vavruska: a striking view of Comanche Gap in Galisteo; a study of Cerro Pedernal in the Jemez Mountains just before sundown; and a spring storm brewing near the Ortiz Mountains in 2005.

The border of the outer candy-bar wrapper is a colorized, Mimbres pottery-inspired design based on the trademarked law-center logo of a bird and a tree by artist/designer Cathie Sullivan, who developed the original law-center logo. The border's colors — bright pink, turquoise blue, and a warm, earth-tone orange — have become synonymous with the Señor Murphy brand. When you remove the outer wrapper, its underside offers information about the New Mexico Environmental Law Center, as well as a donation-submittal form. Even the labels are sourced locally, through Allegra Print & Imaging on St. Michael's Drive.

Small-batch production of Justice Bars takes place at the unassuming 6,000-plus square-foot Señor Murphy factory, which sits just a stone's throw away from numerous car dealerships and fast-food chains along St. Michael's Drive. During my visit, candy maker Chris Garcia — who has been with the company for more than 30 years — stood near a well-worn collection of stationary, copper-lined chocolate-tempering kettles. In order for chocolate to maintain its solid integrity and sheen, Zemlick explained, it must be tempered first. For the Justice Bar, "seeded" chocolate, or chocolate that has gone through a heating-and-cooling process to the point of being tempered, is added to the base chocolate. Realigned crystals contained in the "seed" chocolate act like magnets, attracting loose crystals of fatty acids to begin a broader crystallization process, resulting in a larger batch of well-tempered chocolate (utilizing seeding chocolate is the quickest way to achieve tempering).

Garcia carefully folded nuts and other ingredients into the chocolate, poured the mixture into a handled funnel, and filled plastic candy-bar molds with the chocolate, one bar at a time. He tapped them gently against his work surface to remove any air bubbles, and then set them aside to harden.

There are no whirling machines or factory robots to assume the grunt work here; even the wrapping is done by hand. At another workstation, Pauline Tapia gently tucked Justice Bars into colorful, shiny foil squares, and then attached the outer wrappers with a food-safe adhesive blotter. The care that goes into each candy bar from start to finish is evident, but the proof, as they say, is in the pudding. I took three Justice Bars back to the office, where they promptly disappeared. The Chimayó chile-pistachio-dark-chocolate bar proved the most popular, but they were all well-received. And by that I mean my colleagues devoured them like rabid hyenas set loose at an actual dog and pony show.

All proceeds from the sale of Justice Bars benefit the nonprofit, public-interest New Mexico Environmental Law Center and its mission to provide free or low-cost legal services to state residents dealing with environmental issues. To learn more about the law center and to see a docket of its active cases, visit http://www.nmenvirolaw.org.