About Chef Sam Lang

I don’t bake to coddle anyone’s sweet tooth. I bake because pastry is sensory science in its most delicious form. Every macaron, every ganache, every flaky crust is an experiment in balance — salty, sweet, fatty, sour, bitter, and umami fighting it out until they find a truce on your tongue.

Most people chase sugar. I chase flavor equilibrium. That’s why my French macarons aren’t dainty little sugar grenades; they’re engineered with salt and acid, because real desserts should seduce, not suffocate.

Training & Scientific Approach

I trained in baking and pastry — the classic drills, the precision, the long hours of repetition until “perfect” wasn’t negotiable; it was expected. Later, I fell headlong into food science. That’s when things clicked: pastry wasn’t just about beauty or nostalgia; it was chemistry, physics, sensory design. The kitchen became my lab, where variables are measured in grams and degrees, but results are judged in silence at the table when someone stops talking just to take another bite.

Cacao Chemistry

Cacao Chemistry is the chocolate shop and bakery I co-own in downtown Colorado Springs. We began with a simple premise: chocolate deserves the same level of rigor as wine, beer, or coffee. That means sourcing ethically, lowering sugar without sacrificing pleasure, and refusing shortcuts. The brand leans into science because that’s what pastry actually is: not mysticism, not grandma’s pinch-of-this, but exacting technique and curiosity put into practice.

Our products range from truffles and pâte de fruit to butter caramels and a rotating lineup of seasonal pastries. But the constant is this: everything is built with balance in mind.

The Team Behind the Pastry

Cacao Chemistry isn’t just me hunched over a mixer — it’s a motley crew of people with wildly different backgrounds who somehow speak the same language in chocolate. We’ve got pastry cooks who came out of fine-dining kitchens, baristas who moonlight as rock climbers and photographers, managers with roots in customer service and design, and production staff who treat tempering chocolate like it’s an Olympic sport.

What ties us together isn’t a résumé line — it’s the shared obsession with detail. Whether it’s the snap of a truffle shell, the gloss on a macaron, or the welcome a guest gets at the counter, every piece of this place carries the effort from people who actually care.

Philosophy of Flavor

Sweet isn’t enough. Anyone can dump sugar into a bowl and call it dessert. What matters is balance — the tension between salt and caramel, the acidity that wakes up fruit, the bitterness that keeps chocolate honest, the fatty richness that carries it all, and the elusive umami that makes you wonder why you can’t stop eating.

This isn’t marketing fluff. It’s the difference between forgettable and unforgettable.

Recognition & Community

Our shop has been called the best chocolate some people have ever had. We’ve been voted “Best Of” by local press almost every year, proof that our work resonates beyond the kitchen. And we’ve done it all with a small team, by hand, in small batches, because consistency and integrity don’t scale easily — but they matter.

Why It Matters

Great pastry isn’t about tricks or spectacle. It’s about balance, care, and the stubborn pursuit of getting it right every single day. At Cacao Chemistry, that means honoring the craft, respecting the ingredients, and creating desserts that people actually want to come back for. No gimmicks, no shortcuts — just work that speaks for itself, one bite at a time.