“Help!!!”
I had a question/comment from a reader last week asking me what the conversions are for the Peggy Porschen Lemon Limoncello cake. She uses American cups to measure ingredients and as I am here in sunny England we use grams.
I’ve have attempted (unsuccessfully I might add) to use cup measurements in the past. Martha Stewart recipes always look so amazing so I had a go with some cups that I bought in Australia. Little did I know that American and Australian cup sizes are different, so I got off to a bad start right from the word go!
To find out the conversions I looked in all my best cook books. Not a single one had the conversions, so I went to Google. I can’t believe how many different amounts I came up with for the same measurements. They varied so much that I didn’t know where to start.
Masses of problems
From my searches I’ve worked out that different masses, ie, sugar, flour, butter, liquids etc all have different amounts, so you can’t just say that a cup of sugar is the same as a cup of flour. Measurements are done in volume not by weight.
OMG!!! That’s so confusing. I don’t know how you American’s do it? Anyway, I am putting a call out there to anyone who has a tried and tested list / website / mum’s measurements that we can share here on CakesBakesAndCookies.com, so my reader can make her Lemon Limoncello cake and I can start to make Martha Stewart recipes successfully.
Also, can you let me know exactly how you fill a cup? Do you overfill it with ingredients and then use the back of a knife to make it level, so you know that you’re getting the same amount each time- as you would with measuring spoons?
Please, please leave a comment if you can help. I’ll be sharing the results here as soon as I’ve tested them out!
Thanks so much.
EmmaMT
Let me know what you find out! I would love to do it the “proper” way with a cup rather than confusingly try and convert everything!!
If no one can help I’m going to do a tried and tested on my Madeira cake recipe to see which measurements work out best. I’ll let you know how I get on!
EmmaMT
Hi,
I hate this problem as nearly all of the best recipes are American! So I was looking at Bakerella’s latest post and she had the following recipe with added conversions!! Hope it helps a little…
Homemade Oreos
Makes about 18 2-1/2 inch sandwich cookies
Recipe from Flour reprinted with permission from Chronicle Books.
Cookies
1 cup (2 sticks/228 grams) unsalted butter, melted and slightly cooled
3/4 cup (150 grams) sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup (200 grams) semisweet chocolate chips, melted and slightly cooled
1 egg
1 1/2 cups (210 grams) unbleached all-purpose flour
3/4 cup (90 grams) Dutch-processed cocoa powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1/2 tsp baking soda
Filling
1/2 cup (1 stick/114 grams) unsalted butter, softened
1 2/3 (230 grams) confectioners’ sugar
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 tablespoon milk
Pinch of kosher salt
Food color, optional
Thanks for this. I love it when it says “Kosher salt”. Is there any other kind? Isn’t salt just salt!
I’m investigating deeper and deeper into the cup measurement games! I’ll keep you posted.
EmmaMT
X
If you have an iPhone, there’s an app called Kitchen Dial which is great
For conversions!
Oooohhh thanks for that. I’ve found a few good conversion charts but I thought that cup measurements were different for different ingredients. Like one cup of flour is not equal to one cup of sugar as they are different densities and weights. Do you know if that’s true? I guess I’ll just have to have a go!
The app looks great though. Thanks for the heads up!
EmmaMT