The American recipe said one cup of flour. You scooped with a mug, the cake came out like a brick, and the recipe got the blame. The real problem is that a cup is a volume, and every ingredient weighs something different.
The numbers that save your baking
One cup of plain flour is about 120-125 grams. One cup of granulated sugar is about 200 grams. One cup of butter is about 227 grams. One cup of cocoa powder is only about 85 grams. Same cup, wildly different weights - which is why weighing ingredients is the single biggest upgrade in home baking.
Temperature trips people up too
US recipes bake in Fahrenheit: 350 F, the most common cake temperature, is 177 C or Gas Mark 4. 400 F is 204 C. Getting this wrong by even 25 degrees changes whether a cake rises or burns.
Convert as you cook
Keep a unit converter open while you cook - length, weight, volume and temperature in one place - and write the converted numbers directly onto printed recipes so next time it is instant.
Convert cups, grams, Fahrenheit and more with our Unit Converter.
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