Ingredient Weight Conversions

A lot of recipes that I find on the internet that I want to try for myself are often in American measurements.

At first I thought that when a recipe says "1 cup", for example, I thought that it was the same measurement for whatever ingredient I was measuring out.

However, some of the recipes that I was trying to bake kept going wrong and not coming out as good as I hoped. At first I started to doubt my baking capabilites, but simple recipe's that I couldn't really go wrong with were not coming out as expected.

So then I researched the different measurements that I was using & realised that "1 cup" can mean different measurements for different things.

This table below shows clearly what the measurements convert as depending on what the ingredients are:

1 cup of butter or caster sugar	8 ounces	About 250 grams
1 cup of flour	4 ounces	About 125 grams
1 cup of icing sugar	5 ounces	About 150 grams

A few weeks ago, to make my life a little easier, I bought a cup measurement from the supermarket. This is not the exact one, but mine looks very similar:

Picture: elana's pantry (flickr)

In the set that I bought from Sainsbury's supermarket, I got 5 cup measurements which are different sizes. For example, one measures 1 cup, where as another measures 1/4 cup.

Obviously, it is not essential that you buy a cup measure, as you can just use the table above or other converters to help with your cooking. However, I definitely recommend buying one just to make things easier :)