Something I learned about a moth after I started backing away from the box and baking from scratch...sift your ingredients. It gives the cake a much lighter feel.

How I do it? I put all my dry ingredients (flour, baking soda, baking powder,etc) into a bowl. I dump cupfuls into the sieve or strainer. Then I sift it directly into the beaten butter. It gets all of those clumps of flour and sugar and blends the ingredients together really well. Happy baking!!!

So one day I was trying to roll out a big piece of fondant and I kept getting lines from the rubber bands I have at the end. (The ones that make the fondant a certain thickness.) Obviously, my little foot long rolling pin wasn't going to cut it when it came to big pieces of fondant. So I decided to go to Walmart and buy a big Wilton pin. When I saw it was $20, I decided to investigate other options. $20 for a rolling pin that has nothing special about it other than the brand? No thanks!! So what did I do? I headed on over to Lowes and got a big piece of PVC pipe. It only cost me about $3 and was twice the size of the one at Walmart. I could even put ball bearings in it and cap it off to give it some weight if I needed to. I highly suggest this to anyone that wants to save a little money while still getting the job done!!