Love this thread.....
just had to add when you goto the hobby store (Micheals, Hobby lobby, etc) check out the aisle where they sell clay and sculpture products. You'd be surprised the price difference for items like cutters for clay vs cutters for fondant.
Oh, just thought of it.... I tell my fondant students to go down to their local (Lowes, Home Depot, etc.) and purchase a piece of $2 PVC pipe 1 1/4 inch for rolling out fondant, the Wilton guides $4 that can be purchased separately for the large Wilton rolling pin $25 fit on the PVC pipe.
If Wilton only knew all the extra info I give my students I would be in trouble.
Tamara
Cake Central is my biggest secret. When people ask me how I did something I just say, "Oh, I looked it up on the internet."
WOW! i never imagined this thread would take off! i have learned SO MUCH from reading these posts. 
-ok.. i would have never have thought to put coffee creamer in icing... GREAT IDEA!
-and heating up buttercream before icing the cake makes a lot of sense.. it will save me some headaches
-the jelly crumbcoat thing is awsome
-and i love all the "doctored'' cake ideas.
these responses are exactly what i was hopeing for! i am a self-taught cake maker and i really appreciate all the advice from the pros!
as for my secrets:
i have none besides CC... i never give out the website to people... and no i'm not being selfish! 
I am absolutely loving this post!! I'm a cake newbie so all these secrets and tips are great!!
Great tips you guys!--I want to try making vanilla now...!
I don't think I have any best kept secrets, but here's what I do:
1. Extra cake batter gets baked in 4" springform pans to make mini cakes that go in the freezer for quickie samples (or great midnight snacks).
2. You can get away with NOT greasing a pan at all if you put parchment in the bottom. I never EVER skip the parchment, tho I usually use Pam under it...
3. Never torte, fill, or crumb coat a freshly baked cake (I always freeze mine at least a few hours to overnight).
4. I use as many organic products as possible (sugar, flour, eggs, milk) and Valrhona cocoa and chocolates.
5. Leftover IMBC can be frozen and used for filling in my next cake, but not for the icing--I find it changes in color when defrosted and rewhipped. (Note to self: Bad, bad idea for wedding cakes when you think you can pull out that extra imbc when you run out at 1 a.m., icing a wedding cake)
6. Logicpic support system in every cake. LOVE it!! Transporting is now the thing I worry about the very least, and I can just drop the cake off and disappear, with no time consuming set up on site.
7. Giant scraper from Home Depot spackling department (about 20" across) for smoothing really big cake tops.
8. Wear all white, nonfuzzy clothes when working with white fondant.
9. Homemade gumpaste *can* work, but I found recently that it works best if it's made a long time before you need it (weeks even) and left resting in a tightly sealed container. It seemed more like storebought when I used it later. Using it fresh, it just dried up too quickly while working with it.
10. When working on wedding cakes, I, too, spend time praying for the couple to have a great day and as truly blessed a marriage as I've had. 21 years together and still absolutely crazy about each other! 
I soak all of my cakes in simple syrup....with lemon juice for lemon cakes, rum for chocolate cakes and so forth....I learned it when I worked at the best bakery in my town and thought it was a good idea.
My best kept secret is my intern....I can't tell her this now (as I don't want her to go work for competition) but she is amazing! We don't use a buttercream recipe and I just let her wing it and it turns out pretty much flawless everytime! I have to watch more closely next time and take some notes. I think she really just is trying to do her best because she is new and I blow through things sometimes...she has helped me realize that I need to take it down a notch!
Taking classes: Toba was my instructor and I learned a lot!
Practice: sounds lame but sometimes you just have to sit down with a piping bag and mess around for an hour
Using cookie cutters on fondant for multidimensional pieces
Using nontoxic chalk for petal dust
Take pictures (good ones) of all your cakes, you will be thankful later!
NFSC recipe....soooo good everyone loves it! I will never use anything else
I soak all of my cakes in simple syrup....with lemon juice for lemon cakes, rum for chocolate cakes and so forth....I learned it when I worked at the best bakery in my town and thought it was a good idea.
My best kept secret is my intern....I can't tell her this now (as I don't want her to go work for competition) but she is amazing! We don't use a buttercream recipe and I just let her wing it and it turns out pretty much flawless everytime! I have to watch more closely next time and take some notes. I think she really just is trying to do her best because she is new and I blow through things sometimes...she has helped me realize that I need to take it down a notch!
Taking classes: Toba was my instructor and I learned a lot!
Practice: sounds lame but sometimes you just have to sit down with a piping bag and mess around for an hour
Using cookie cutters on fondant for multidimensional pieces
Using nontoxic chalk for petal dust
Take pictures (good ones) of all your cakes, you will be thankful later!
NFSC recipe....soooo good everyone loves it! I will never use anything else
6. Logicpic support system in every cake. LOVE it!! Transporting is now the thing I worry about the very least, and I can just drop the cake off and disappear, with no time consuming set up on site.
Can you tell me what the Logicpic support system is?
Oh, that makes sense to me now! For years I did not use a butter cream recipe and it turned out great most of the times... now I use the one I posted (strawberry butter cream) on the Recipes part of the web site... I substitute the flavors in it for the fillings for various cakes, and it has been a winner every time! I think the butter you use really makes the difference!
besides the things I've learned here, CC is definitely my secret. no joke. my friends will say oh I have a friend who likes cake decorating, do you know any good website? and I'll be like sure, maybe try wilton.com.
rotflol!!!
I do the SAME THING!!
The 1-2 punch of luck's pearl spray...and clear gold on top of that...
OH CRAP....now i gotta kill ya.
elaborate, please - I'm not familiar with either of these!
Love this thread.....
just had to add when you goto the hobby store (Micheals, Hobby lobby, etc) check out the aisle where they sell clay and sculpture products. You'd be surprised the price difference for items like cutters for clay vs cutters for fondant.
Tamara
Thanks for this tip! I never would have thought of it and it saved me some cash today.
Endymion, when you make your gumpaste molds do you "grease" the object before pushing it into the gumpaste & do you let it dry in the gumpaste before removing it or do you press it in, remove it then let the mold dry?
As for artificial sweeteners. Yes, I know they aren't the best for you. I drink them more now than ever & trying to get back to my 1/2 gal to 1 gal of water/day. I just tell my family they won't have to worry about embalming me when I die. lol Cakediva, I've always liked to put a little fruit juice in my water. My favorite is lime juice. It's not as tart as lemon. Another thing you can do is get a 2 or 3 qt pitcher & put some strawberries & lemons/limes/oranges, etc in it to "soak"--just pour off what you want. Experiment w/ different fruits, they add enough natural flavor & not a lot of sugar.
My tips have been found on CC & Sugarshack's DVD's . No, I don't give out the site or recipes that people "love". I've done a lot of trial & error & won't give it up that easy! . I too say a prayer of blessing over my cakes & cookies.
Think my best used tip since I found it is a center dowel. I may try a plate system once I have my business up & going.
For the gumpaste molds: I think I just pressed the object into the gumpaste and then removed it right away.... Just went and found the little car. It doesn't feel greasy, so I must have just used a light dusting of cornstarch (rather than cooking spray) to keep it from sticking.
My secrets (most learned here, of course):
- Using flavored yogurt instead of sourcream to enhance flavor.
macsmom,
if the WASC recipe calls for 2 cups of sour cream, can i simply replace it with 2 cups of plain yogurt? it is difficult to get sourcream at the supermarket locally sometimes, and i have been searching for a good substitute. have you or antone else ever used this substitute?
http://www.recipezaar.com/153046
Staceyboots I have used the same amount of yogurt for the sour cream, even 1/2 & 1/2 (did it when I discovered I didn't have enough sc late at night).
Another sub chart is here http://cakecentral.com/cake_recipe-7056-In-a-Pinch-Substitutions-Chart.html
âThe sweet kiss of death known as sugar!â
Yes, yes, artificial sweeteners are bad for you, but what about the evils of refined white sugar and processed white flour? Have you read the book âSugar Bluesâ? The author traces all the worldâs problems (war, slavery, poverty, addiction, mental illness, diabetes, tooth decay, obesity, etc, etc) back to refined sugar.
So which will kill me first (LOL) the artificial sweetener in my coffee or the refined sugar in my cake?
Seriously, pick up a copy of Sugar Blues or Sugar Shock. You will never look at sugar the same way again.
BTW: my best tips/secret is SugarShackâs DVD on perfectly smoothed cakes! It is FAB!
NFSC is no fail sugar cookie recipe posted on here
Homemade vanilla:
1 liter vodka or bourbon
10 split and scraped vanilla beans in your closet for 6 weeks
I don't think 1 liter of vodka is enough to keep me in the closet for 6 weeks 
I jest....thanks
Here's a loaded make your own vanilla topic link.
http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=103205&hl=making+vanilla
And another little ditty is--wanna get the corners on square cakes done right? After the cake is all iced and you wanna start smoothing, pipe an extra fat line of icing up each corner--it will help tremendously.
None of these are my secrets of course. I just learned them from someone else somewhere along the line.
Here's a fondant tip that really helped me:
After you're done rolling out the fondant to the size you need, and before you put it on the cake....go over the it with your fondant smoother. You can fix most of the flaws and it get very very smooth. Then after it's smooth put it over your cake. Doing this makes it much easier to get a flawless finish.
The Logicpic system is my favorite, and you can check it out at logicpic.com
They have great service, and the system works great, is easy to put together, and is basically disposable OR reusable, so you can have the bride not worry about it and toss it (build the cost into the cake), or have them leave you a deposit and return it (which I do), so you get some of the support frames back.
Check it out; I never transport without it. Seriously, I joke that you'd have to drop my cakes on the floor to get them to come apart...
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