Metric conversion for ingredients

You are talking about remembering two completely different sets of conversions.

You surely know that a cup of flour has less weight than a cup of sugar?  Trying to remember how many ounces in a cup of each ingredient wastes lots of time, and it's a way to make mistakes.

The easiest way to weigh ingredients is to forget all about the cups.  You can weigh in grams or pounds/ounces.  If you are buying ingredients in pounds/ounces then there is a built-in reason to use recipes with pounds/ounces.

Start with some  recipes that are written in either grams or pounds/ounces. Look at the recipes on King Arthur Flour--some have buttons at the top of the list of ingredients to convert to "ounces" (weight)  or "grams". 

Print out a few simple recipes with the weights and just weigh.  No you don't actually have to mix--just weigh out all the ingredients for a cake, cookies, etc and line them up on a counter.

For a scale with a flat top, cut some pieces of waxed paper.  Put a piece of waxed  paper onto the scale, zero the reading,  and add the ingredient slowly until you reach the required weight.  End of story. Next piece of paper, next ingredient.

Once you get the hang of weighing, go ahead and mix something up and bake it. Wasn't that so simple?

I have also found this very confusing before.

You can do a google search for a baking ingredients converter and then keep the measurements of the ingredients you use the most written down with your cookbooks or somewhere handy when you are baking, it works for me :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aurora42196 

Thanks for clarifying no wonder why I was so confused. So if there is a cup of flour needed they're referring to 8oz correct?

No, sorry.

They are referring to a standard "dry" measuring cup filled and levelled off--whose weight depends on how that cup gets filled. If you sifted the flour first, your cup of flour could weigh as little as 3.5 ounces and if you packed that cup it would weigh well over 5 ounces.

And a "wet" measuring cup (used for measuring liquids) has a different volume than a "dry" measuring cup.

The "wet" cup is subdivided but the "dry" measuring cups are intended to be used with the "fill and level off" method. 

That is why I have advised you to competely forget about "cups" and find recipes that say "pounds/ounces" or "grams". 

Your scale should have a switch on it. Start with the display set to "ounces". Put 2 wrapped sticks of butter onto it, switch the display to "grams" and you get something over 228+ grams (I don't know how much the stick wrappers weigh).

So to give you an example to play with, the classic British Victoria sandwich recipe for 4 eggs:

8 ounces butter (2 sticks to you)

8 ounces by weight of sugar

8 ounces by weight of flour

4 eggs US "large" grade which are supposed to weigh 2 ounces each in the shell

(please see what 4 whole eggs actually weigh)

Doesn't that look a whole lot simpler? 

Or you can think exclusively in grams  (the rest of the world does).  But we don't go around with the cups, we just add the food onto the scale until we see "250 grams" if that is what the recipe calls for. Stuff like oil is less dense  than water, so you use a bowl to weigh out the required amount of runny stuff. The "zero" feature takes care of the weight of the empty bowl.

And when you look at one of those King Arthur Flour recipes, you will see that the quantities change when you click from "cups" to "ounces" on their website.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Aurora42196 

I do see it looks a lot simpler but I wanted to use some recipes I have in a cook book that are measured with cups so would you suggest that I re-do those recipes converted into pounds/ounces?

If they are recipes you have used and you are confident in your methods of measurment, you could convert them to measure by weight, but why would you?  Unless you find measuring by weight to be more convenient for some reason, if a recipe is successful as it is I don't see what would be the point of conversion.

Hello cakeyouverymuch, most of the recipes listed in the Internet includes exact weight measurements. If you want to have the exact weight of your ingredients, you will never go wrong. I use weight measurements myself and I find that a lot easier. However cake baking usually ask  that you follow exactly as it is written. Check out the recipe you want to use against the one posted in the Internet  and you will usually find one with the conversion already done for you. Good Luck

Why not buy a set of cup measures I have two of them, you usually get a set that comes with two cups,one anda  half cup, one cup ,half a cup, 2/3 of a cup, it seems to work for me I have never had any problems with my recipes using those :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by peppercorns 

Hello cakeyouverymuch, most of the recipes listed in the Internet includes exact weight measurements. If you want to have the exact weight of your ingredients, you will never go wrong. I use weight measurements myself and I find that a lot easier. However cake baking usually ask  that you follow exactly as it is written. Check out the recipe you want to use against the one posted in the Internet  and you will usually find one with the conversion already done for you. Good Luck

My point is, if you HAVE a recipe that works you should probably use it as it is written.  If you are looking for new recipes and you specifically want to go the weight route instead of the cups route by all means go ahead and search for those recipes that use weight.  If you want to take perfectly good recipes that already work for you and that are written in cups and convert them to weights you could also do that, but I don't see that as a productive use of time.  Others may differ, and they are entitled to their opinion.

Weights and volumes are interchangeable, and you can use either form of measurement in any recipe, new or tried and true.   In each of my favorite recipes I have both the volume and weights listed, so I can use whatever method is easiest at the moment.  To figure this out, I first made the recipes by volume as directed, then dumped each ingredient onto the scale (zeroed with a paper plate) to get the weight.  I liked using weights so much, that I created  the chart below, measuring and weighing each amount several times for accuracy.  Other amounts can then be  easily calculated, and I write all of the conversions right onto the recipe.   Virtually every cake recipe I've seen with flour by volume is sifted first for uniformity, and the volume column assumes the flour is sifted first.  My measurements are consistent with RLB in the Cake Bible (which is reassuring!}.  She lists all her ingredients by volume and by weight and if you have that book, you can use her measurements as a guide. If you need to switch from ounces to grams, 1 ounce is about 28.5  grams.  There are lots of free conversion apps for smartphones. If you want to be extra sure, make your favorite cake as usual, but weigh your ingredients after measuring by volume, and write it down for next time.  It takes a little thought up front, but ultimately is a lot easier to use weight than volume.  No more sifting!!

Here are my conversions for sifted cake flour, and bakers sugar (RLB's conversions are the same for regular granulated sugar)

Cake flour

volume (sifted)                          weight

1 cup                                      3.5 ounces             100 grams

1.5 cups                                   5.25 ounces          150 grams

2 cups                                     7  ounces              200 grams

2.5 cups                                  8.25 ounces           250 grams

3 cups                                    10.5  ounces          300 grams

Baker's sugar

volume                                  weight

1 cup                                     7 ounces                  200 grams

1.5 cups                                10.5  ounces             300 grams

2 cups                                   14 ounces                 400 grams

HTH, good luck (I love math)