This former dentist has a sweet tooth. Now she runs a gourmet chocolate shop.

Did you hear about the dentist who’s now a chocolatier?

It almost sounds like the set-up for a joke, and Cioccolatier owner Silvia Valentoni leans into that, quipping that the goal of both of her careers has been to “make people smile.”

Valentoni and her husband, Ronald Peach, are the forces behind Cioccolatier, a gourmet chocolate shop that has locations in both Cherry Creek Shopping Center in Denver and Park Meadows mall in Lone Tree. Originally from São Paulo, the couple sources their cacao from farms in Brazil and they use Italian techniques to make ganache flavors like lemon pie, cachaça, cognac and more in their Castle Rock chocolate factory.

Valentoni had worked as a dentist in both Brazil and the United States. (She has a master’s of science in implantology and prosthesis from Goethe University in Frankfurt.) He was an engineer and owned a furniture factory in São Paolo. Opening the chocolate shop was a dream she and Peach had shared for years, but they ...