When it came time to transition a longtime hobby of making scrumptious sweets from various chocolate blends into an actual business, Newtown resident Linda Sparaco said she simply blended some initials and a modification of her name together and Emalyn Sweets was born.

But years before that, Sparaco — who may love giving away her confections more than she loves sampling them as recipes emerge — had already been perfecting her formulas and product lines as popular gifts for family and friends.

“Looking around the room as I walked through the front door during the holidays, I’d see my families [sic] faces light up as they realized I had tons of chocolate with me,” Sparaco notes at her website, emalynsweets.com.

While she loves chocolate, and remembers her mother making chocolate nut clusters at home, the inspiration for Sparaco’s hobby landed on her dining room table in the form of a 10-pound chocolate bar.

“Someone gave it to my aunt, and she knew I loved to bake so she gave it to me. I said to myself, ‘What am I going to do with this?’ So I taught myself how to temper, and that’s how things all got started,” Sparaco told The Newtown Bee during a recent pop-by to her Simm Lane commercial kitchen.

The relatively cozy but clean, efficient space she occupies is right-sized for exactly what Sparaco needs to do all the creating and storing. A neighboring unit in the converted industrial complex houses all her packaging, marketing, and trade show gear.

She points to shelves stacked with nondescript cardboard boxes from various companies in the US and Europe.

“Those are all my chocolates,” she said of the raw materials of her craft. Sparaco explained that she works to achieve a consistently sweet, smooth, and creamy flavor to all her finished products, even though some may start out with more bitter or cocoa-heavy variations.

“I guess it’s my specialty, and the thing I am constantly told, whether it’s by family, friends, clients, or people just walking up for a taste at a trade show,” she said. “Everybody always says how creamy it is.”

Getting Started

Sparaco’s commute to her first commercial chocolate kitchen was just the length of her basement staircase, as she perfected her hobby-turned-business in a fully licensed facility in her former Brookfield home.

But in preparing to relocate to Newtown in 2019, Sparaco said it was time to move it out of the house and into a proper location offsite. She found the ideal arrangement in the lowest level of the 3 Simm Lane complex — Section F, Unit 1E.

“I never had a retail store,” Sparaco said, although she spent 16 years working in retail with Lord & Taylor “in a previous life.”

“I’d just go to all these office buildings,” she said, “and every trade show and chocolate expo you could possibly imagine.”

When COVID-19 put the kibosh on all those trade shows and expos, Sparaco turned to farmers markets to showcase her products. After just one “melty” experience, she quickly improvised a way to show off her chocolates while keeping them away from the heat and sun.

“That was last summer, and I did really well. This year I’ll do even more,” she said. “I was a member of a pop-up shop [collective] in Bethel with some others and I was the number-one seller with my chocolates.”

Samples of Emalyn’s mint bark, organic raisin bark, chocolate covered marshmallows, s’mores clusters, and caramel bar were all individually delicious and as smooth and creamy as Sparaco claims.

Finding Emalyn’s

Now Sparaco is shifting gears to building a wholesale market and growing retail presence.

Her treats are available at Queen Street Gifts in Newtown and at Halas Market in Danbury, at Chihuahua’s Deli, Jesters Coffee Shop, and the Brookfield Craft Center in Brookfield, and at Tazza Café locations in Ridgefield and in Katonah, Armonk, and Millwood, N.Y.

Direct to client, she can customize a gift of select sweets, barks, or even seasonally themed pieces (think bunnies, turkeys, or Santas), packaged in assorted bags or “book boxes” for gifting to one or one hundred or more. Sparaco can add logos to various chocolate products as business or corporate premiums, too.

Emalyn Sweets offers some immediate regional delivery and ships around the country and the world.

Sparaco has also done a bit of traveling in the interest of better perfecting her product line, attending certification training in British Columbia as well as completing a number of online courses.

“Working with another chocolatier is like the best thing in the world,” she said. “They show you your mistakes, and help you fix the things you thought you were doing right — and it usually makes it easier, too.”

Anyone looking to see where the magic happens is invited to an open house event on Saturday February 6 and 13 from 11 am to 3 pm at her Simm Lane kitchen, located all the way to the bottom end of the building and to the right — look for the glass double doors.

To order in time for Valentine’s Day — or for any occasion — visit the Emalyn Sweets website or Facebook page, or call 203-304-1689.