Hunter Wilson/Daily NewsChristina Jones puts a cake into her oven Friday at her home.

As a professional baker, Christina Jones has made perhaps a thousand cakes in her lifetime, but four of her latest creations have had unique clients.

Those four 8-inch child’s birthday cakes were made after a recent chance encounter with a distraught mother.

“I was in Kroger and saw a lady crying by the bakery. When I asked if she needed help, she told me that her husband had lost his job,” Jones said.

The woman told Jones she couldn’t afford a birthday cake for her child. Jones stepped in and got the Kroger bakery manager to offer the woman a cake at a discounted price, but the thought that children were having to do without simple birthday cakes as the recession ate up their parents’ jobs gnawed at her.

“I decided that’s ridiculous,” Jones said. “I came home one day and told my dad, ‘I want to do this.’ ”

“This” was start Cake 4 Kids, a program offering free birthday cakes to families where a parent has lost a job.

Jones, 30, is the owner of Imagine Cakes & Chocolates, a company specializing in special event cakes and chocolate candies.

A Bowling Green native, she began the company five years ago while living in Texas. She moved back to her hometown a few years ago and brought the business with her, officially opening in a facility off Lovers Lane in April 2007.

Spurred by the encounter with the distraught mother, Jones ran an advertisement recently in the Daily News, offering a free 8-inch birthday cake for children up to age 14 who have a parent who has recently lost a job.

“I believe every child should have a birthday cake,” Jones says in the advertisement.

Since it ran, Jones had four families take her up on the deal, as well as callers who wanted to make monetary donations; she declined the money, saying well-wishers could donate supplies such as sprinkles and candles to top the cakes.

“Tons of people called me with support and to offer donations,” she said. “But I’m not looking for gratitude. I just want to do it.”

Jones delivered the cakes to the four families with as little fuss as possible.

“I didn’t want it to be a sobby thing,” she said. “I want them to feel comfortable.”

Even as she stays busy preparing to move into a new home for Imagine Cakes & Chocolates on Main Avenue in May, she would like to do more baking for needy children.

“I’ve had a wonderful childhood … we weren’t rich by any means but I know there are a lot less fortunate than me,” Jones said of her philosophy of giving. “I’m the kind of person who would give the shirt off my back because I know I have others.”

— For more information about Cake 4 Kids, call Jones at 320-4525.