Those with a sweet tooth are sure to find something worth munching at one of Jackson County’s many specialty shops.

In downtown Sylva, Annie’s Naturally Bakery is a family-owned wholesale and retail bakery based on Italian tradition and with a focus on organic and all-natural ingredients. The bakery doesn’t use any preservatives or chemical additives, ensuring that its breads, cookies and pastries are made “the old-world way” with a longer fermentation process and a truly homemade taste.

Bakery co-owner Joe Ritota is the fourth generation in a family of bakers. His great-grandfather, grandfather, mother and father all worked in bakeries. The business appears to have had a habit of bringing couples together as it was in a bakery that Joe’s mother and father met, and one of Joe’s rounds out delivering bread that led him to his wife Annie.

In Western North Carolina, Joe baked bread for friends. It was a hobby, but eventually a local restaurant asked if Joe would consider selling his yeasty work on a regular basis. Joe and Annie spent three years baking in their garage before the moved the operation to downtown Sylva.

Today Annie’s Naturally Bakery is a warm and inviting place for customers to press their nose against the bakery case and muse over the rows of snickerdoodle cookies, cranberry scones, bear claws, bagels, challa, ciabatta, stolen and spelt loaves. Lunch brings sandwiches served on customer’s choice of bread, fresh soups and salads that appeal to those both health conscious and not.

Down the road at Dillsboro Court, Lorri and Christa Smith are serving up an assortment of coffee beverages accompanied by homemade cheesecakes, muffins and more.

Lorri had jumped around in her career, once owning a jewelry store, going to school at Western Carolina University to study interior design, working at Drake Software in Franklin, and being a kindergarten assistant. It wasn’t until she saw a business for sale that she got the idea to run a coffee shop and went through training with Mountain BizWorks to create a business plan.

After completing the class, Lorri secured a loan through BizWorks to open her own store.

“That kind of gave me a little more confidence,” she said. “At least I had someone holding my hand I was wasn’t out there on my own.”

Coffee Grounds Coffee Bar opened a year and a half ago and from the first day things were hectic.

“I thought ‘what the heck did I do?’,” Lorri says with a laugh.

After sampling several different brands and roasts of coffee, Lorri had settled on the work of Smoky Mountain Coffee Roasters. The company’s medium roast seems to be the most popular with Coffee Grounds customers, though the espresso milkshake has become a signature item.

Another eye-catching menu item is Snow Cream, which is simply ice, vanilla and milk.

“We have some things here that people can have if they don’t want caffeine,” Lorri says.

“Or if they don’t like coffee,” chimes in daughter Christa.

Christa makes all of Coffee Grounds sweet goods, except for the cheesecakes — that’s Lorri’s responsibility. For both, learning to bake was a new skill.

“I’d never made a cheesecake before,” Lorri says.

“And I’d never made a muffin,” Christa says.

Items in the baked goods case tend to reflect the season, though some things like the peanut butter cheesecake always sell well.

For a sweet treat you can also head to the Dillsboro Chocolate Factory for slabs of rich fudge from butter pecan to chocolate coconut. All fudge is made at the Chocolate Factory, there’s also a sugar-free line for those watching their caloric intake. Chocolates are made from gourmet single bean Venezuelan chocolate — milk chocolate is 41 percent cacao and lightly sweetened with brown sugar and dark chocolate is 58.5 percent cacao. A special order can be made for those looking for an even more pure dark chocolate taste.

Nearby in Dillsboro there’s also the Choo-Choo Coffee Company at the Great Smoky Mountains Railroad depot and Bradley’s General Store, which offers hand-dipped ice cream and old-time floats.