By Tabitha Evans Moore | EDITOR & PUBLISHER
In Moore County, leadership doesn’t always look like agendas, spreadsheets, and a stern expression. Sometimes it wears an apron, smells like buttercream, and stays up past midnight to get the piping just right.
Locals Carrie Barnett and Jammie Cashion both serve on the Moore County School Board by day – but by night (and weekends, and whenever they can squeeze in the time), they’re artists of a different kind. Their medium? Cake. And not just any cake. These are tiered, sculpted, painstakingly detailed confections that turn birthdays into showstoppers and anniversaries into edible art galleries.
For both women, what began as personal favors and family traditions quickly turned into something bigger – something that, like their school board service, is rooted in love, community, and the quiet power of showing up with your whole heart.
Their stories – layered with flavor, grit, and grace – remind us that there’s more than one way to serve your community.
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Baking Origin Stories
Both women say the matriarchs in the family played a role in their desire to love others through food.
Carrie says both her mother and grandmother made delicious desserts throughout her childhood – often without even glancing at the recipe. Her mother, Janice Logan, started the tradition of making the family birthday cakes – and none of them were simple.
“If I asked for a turkey cake, she found a way to make a turkey cake. One year, she even made a California Raisins concert cake for my sister – it was incredible.”
That tradition came full circle when her husband, Drew, encouraged her to keep that tradition going. She says she decided, with his cheerleading, to give it a shot and boy was it a doozy. Her son, Wayland, wanted a superhero cake for his third birthday, so she let him go online to look at pictures for inspiration.
“I let him look online and pick one out and regretted it immediately,” she jokes. “It had four sections: Superman, Batman, Hulk, and Captain America. I felt very out of my depth.”
Carrie says she watched tons of videos and tried a lot of trial-and-error but the result turned out fabulous.
“I was really pleased with the end result. More importantly, Wayland loved it. He was so proud of his superhero cake, and so I was proud of his superhero cake.”
For Jammie, the love of baking came from her grandmother, Toots Fanning, and her mother, Janet Fanning. And like Carrie, she baked her first several cakes for family members.
“I like to give things that I make,” she says.
Then, her daughter-in-law, Autumn Cashion, asked her to make a birthday cake for her dad, Justin. They were expecting a simple sheet cake. Instead, Jammie delivered a multi-tiered cake in the shape of a Jack Daniel’s barrel topped with a miniature bottle of Single Barrel and ice cubes.
“Everyone just raved over it and told me that I’d found a new hobby, “Jammie says. “I fought it hard, but I like it. So many people encouraged me and told me my creations were unique. So, finally I gave in one cake at a time.”
Cakes as Creative Expression
Both women thrive on personalization of the sugary creations and takes pride on over delivering for their customers whether that’s a friend or neighbor or a family member. They both ask for inspiration photos, but say they’d never just recreate someone else’s cake art. Things like favorite flavors and the number of people being served are also important.
Carrie says that folks will send her a party invitation so she can pick up “the vibe” of the event but sometimes all she gets is a color scheme or theme.
“I just start with a few basic ideas and trust the creative process to do its thing,” she says.
Jammie says her bullseye is always making someone’s cake dreams come true – a process that has her adding touches and rearranging pieces until the cake owner pulls up in her driveway.
“For every cake I make, there’s this moment, a feeling I get, when I know it’s just right,” Jammie says. “I might have to move a bead ten times, but when I finally get that one feeling, I know it’s done.”
Cakes That Mattered
Though they’ve each created dozens of cakes there are those that stand out because of their emotional impact – a moment when the cake itself transcended into something more: a vessel of memory, grief, joy, and legacy.
For Carrie, one such moment of emotional resonance came when a grieving mother asked her to make a first birthday cupcake for a child she lost at birth.
“It was such an honor to be trusted with something so personal and meaningful. I put extra care into every detail, knowing how much love it represented.”
Jammie too has transformed core memories into confection. In a single weekend, she created cakes for both the youngest member of her family, her granddaughter Everly, and the oldest, her aunt Opal Casey who was turning 102.
“There was nearly 100 years between them,” she says. “I just thought that was really neat.”
Jammie also says that the cake she made for her grandfather, Clyde Fanning’s 90th birthday, also felt emotionally impactful. As part of her preparation, she borrowed his well-worn Bible, so she could recreate it in confectionary form – and honestly the results were impressive.
“People thought it was an actual Bible because it looked older and had the same creases and tears as his actual Bible. It was really neat.”
Mr. Fanning – who died in March 2024 – gained notoriety in Lynchburg as the “mule man” because he loved working with his mule team. He often participated in local parades and other community events.
For his birthday, in addition to the Bible cake, Jammie created a three-tier cake featuring a replica of his favorite baseball cap on the top layer and a fondant version of the heart-shaped breastplate from his mule team at the base.
“He walked up to the cake, and was looking at it, then he picked up that piece, and asked where I got it. When I explained that it wasn’t the actual breast plate but something I made, he couldn’t believe it. It was pretty special because it was his last birthday cake.”
From Kitchen to Boardroom
Both women say they view their role as Moore County School Board members as a way to nurture the next generation, much like they nurture their cake recipients. They both see school board service and cake making as a form of heart-centered leadership.
Carrie says she views both baking and school board work as an act of service with the end user in mind.
“As a board member, I’ve been trusted to invest my time, skills, and care into making decisions that don’t always directly affect me or my family but matter deeply to others,” she says. “Just like with dessert decorating, you must begin with the end result in mind. It takes patience, planning, and a desire to create something meaningful with others in mind. Both require time, planning, and a lot of care.”
She says as a Moore County High School alum and a parent of both current and future students, she possesses a strong personal stake in the success of both students and the school system.
“I care deeply about the education and future of the kids in this county. As someone who has been in the classroom, I also hope I can also be a voice for our teachers.”
Jammie says she approaches both baking and school board work with research, planning, and a whole lot of heart. She spends hours and hours researching both.
“Everything, every decision that I make on the school board and every decision that I make with a cake, it may sound corny, but it comes from my heart.”
Jammie says she decided to run for the school board position because she felt deeply connected to and responsible for the kids that came through her daycare – a business she sold several years ago.
“I had all of those kids that came through the daycare, and they would be going to school as well,” she says. “I felt like I could help form decisions that would impact their lives in an even greater way. I’m very invested in the children of Moore County.”
Show Up as Yourself and Just Love Folks
When we ask both women, if the Moore County School Board were a cake, what kind of cake would it be and why, they both give very creative answers.
Carrie says the board would be a Hummingbird cake with cream cheese filling, frosted with plain white buttercream.
“It’s a spiced cake with banana, pineapple, pecans, and sometimes coconut. It might look simple or vanilla on the outside, but there’s a lot going on under the basic frosting,” she says. “Like the school board, it takes a mix of ingredients that may not seem cohesive at first, but somehow it all works. In the end, you get something warm, multi-layered, and sweet.”
Jammie says the school board would be a five-layer cake with each layer representing a different but complementary flavor.
“Each of us is our own flavor, we have our own ideas, but we come together to create something larger than our individual piece,” she says. “It takes the board, the director of schools, the teachers, the parents, and the entire community.”
Both women are constantly learning and perfecting their sweet art.
Carrie says she’d like to try her hand at making a hyper-realistic cake of some kind because she’s fascinated by the whole process of making something out of cake that looks like something entirely different.
Jammie’s already knee-deep in the research phase of an ambitious new culinary project, a cake replica of Neyland Stadium.
In the end, they both serve as community examples that leadership can be creative, collaborative, and heart centered. Each also lives as proof that making an impact doesn’t need to be complicated. Just show up as yourself and love folks.
If you’d like to learn more about their designs, or order a cake from them, you can check out Barnett’s The Sweet Stitch Facebook page or reach out to her via Messenger. Though Jammie doesn’t have a page dedicated to baking side hustle, she does have an album on her personal Facebook called Jammie’s Creations where you can check out her work. You can also reach out to her via Facebook Messenger. •
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