Heaven's Gold serves up the sweets

Christa Jennings
04-07-2007

Childersburg and area residents with a sweet tooth or upcoming special event will be happy to know they don’t have to travel far to get what they want. Heaven’s Gold offers “a little taste of Heaven on Earth,” with cakes for every occasion, including regular homemade, birthday, wedding, baby shower and other decorated cakes. Owner Chunde McKinney currently operates the business out of her home in the Kymulga community, on the outskirts of Childersburg. However, she purchased a building in downtown Childersburg next to Judy Rochelle’s School of Dance in October and hopes to be moved into it by the fall. She and her husband, Andre, have three daughters, 12-year-old Bianca, 10-year-old Christian and 7-year-old Jordan. Formerly an administrative assistant at Precept, Chunde was laid off during downsizing. At that time, she decided she didn’t want to work for anyone else. She said she wanted to work from home so she could stay with her daughters more. She tried a variety of work-from-home jobs, but none that really suited her. McKinney said the idea to start a cake business was a blessing from God. She was recording with different gospel artists and was singing with a ministry in Birmingham when they needed to get new uniforms. Not having the money up-front to purchase one, she began baking and selling little pound cakes for $5 each. The cakes took McKinney three months to perfect, using a family recipe she had gotten from her mom, Jean Cook. Those who bought the cakes began raving about how delicious they were, and McKinney decided she wanted to get into baking full-time. Although she knew how to bake, she decided she also wanted to learn how to decorate cakes after having seen cake contests on Food Network. She took three one-month long courses in Birmingham to learn how to decorate. “I’d say it’s 30 percent skill and 70 percent creativity and imagination that God gave me,” McKinney said. She has been enjoying the cake business for about two years, including a year spent decorating cakes for Piggly Wiggly while also maintaining Heaven’s Gold. Through the business, McKinney offers cakes for all occasions, with a passion for decorating. She enjoys making old-fashioned homemade cakes that she describes as “church cakes,” ones that people today don’t have as much time to make. She will sometimes decorate these, as well. Some of the many homemade cakes she offers include Italian cream, red velvet, German chocolate and a special strawberry cake. She also offers the cake she is perhaps best known for, her pound cake. The name for her business is even derived from these pound cakes. While baking them and talking with a friend one day, McKinney thought of the cakes as being like gold from angels in Heaven and came up with the name, Heaven’s Gold. In addition to homemade cakes, she also offers decorated cakes for all occasions, including birthday, wedding, baby shower and sympathy cakes, among others. McKinney said she especially loves doing wedding cakes and would like to do more of those, in addition to baby shower cakes. She especially likes those because they allow her to do 3-dimensional style cakes, which is a passion of hers when it comes to decorating. “Word of mouth is my biggest seller, and I have great repeat customers,” McKinney said. She is currently getting together the funds to move into the building in Childersburg and does hope to be there by the fall. She intends for it to be a classy shop and said she will offer some other treats, such as muffins, pastries and candies, but the focus will still be on cakes. “It will be a sweets shop, but will still be primarily cakes,” McKinney said. “That’s what I love.” Being moved into the building will allow her to separate home from work, as she currently fully operates the business from the large kitchen area of her family’s home. “I want to be able to serve everyone,” she said. “I know the capacity there would be so much greater.” McKinney also has aspirations of eventually being a one-stop shop with decorating and catering services also offered. Although she has done some business for residents in Birmingham, Talladega and Anniston, McKinney said she is lesser known in the local community. However, she did receive some publicity from participating in the recent Taste of Sylacauga event. She had eight sheet cakes there, in addition to chocolate-covered strawberries, another of her specialties. “It went so wonderfully,” McKinney said. “I loved it. It just amazed me.” She said she had taken a box of 500 business cards with her to the event, and when she left she only had about 15 cards remaining. “It was one of the best things I could have done,” she said. “I was really pleased. I loved it. You cannot beat that publicity.” McKinney does have various turn-around times for cake orders, depending on the request. For weddings, she said she typically needs to have the order called in two months prior to the event. For a small wedding, it can be three to four weeks in advance, depending on what the customer wants. For other cake orders, McKinney said two weeks notice is fine for baby showers, birthdays and other events. To place an order, call Chunde on her cell phone at 205-902-7471, or on her home phone at 256-378-6849. Chunde, daughter of Larry and Jean Cook, and Andre, son of Woodrow and Patricia McKinney, grew up in the Childersburg area. They and their daughters are members of Word Alive International Outreach in Coldwater.

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