Serialize an object to string

Use a StringWriter instead of a StreamWriter:

public static string SerializeObject<T>(this T toSerialize)
{
    XmlSerializer xmlSerializer = new XmlSerializer(toSerialize.GetType());

    using(StringWriter textWriter = new StringWriter())
    {
        xmlSerializer.Serialize(textWriter, toSerialize);
        return textWriter.ToString();
    }
}

Note, it is important to use toSerialize.GetType() instead of typeof(T) in XmlSerializer constructor: if you use the first one the code covers all possible subclasses of T (which are valid for the method), while using the latter one will fail when passing a type derived from T. 
 
Here is a link with some example code that motivate this statement, with XmlSerializer throwing an Exception when typeof(T) is used, because you pass an instance of a derived type to a method that calls SerializeObject that is defined in the derived type’s base class: http://ideone.com/1Z5J1.

Also, Ideone uses Mono to execute code; the actual Exception you would get using the Microsoft .NET runtime has a different Message than the one shown on Ideone, but it fails just the same.