American cup measurements?

spendaholic

My raspberry muffins never turn out the same more than once, whether I use an American recipe or a British one. Doh!

squeaky

spendaholic wrote:

That sounds like when our old butter packs were marked with lines for ounces or 25g - or do they still?

I just bought some anchor butter form asda and it is marked in 50gram (2oz) sections.

The butter was quite expensive at just over £35 but it came with a free Kenwood Chef FP180 so I wasn't too upset

I am now though - Amazon have just dropped the price on these by £5.00

BVGGER !

Queenie

squeaky wrote:

The butter was quite expensive at just over £35 but it came with a free Kenwood Chef FP180 so I wasn't too upset !

:rotfl: :rotfl: :T

spendaholic

squeaky wrote:

The butter was quite expensive at just over £35

What?! :eek:

squeaky wrote:

but it came with a free Kenwood Chef FP180 so I wasn't too upset

Ah. :rotfl:

I hate to burst your bubble, mate, but I think you'll find it's the other way around. :rolleyes:

(And yes, I am joking.)

dsdl23185

I've had a quick look through my cookery books,but I can't find a conversion from cup to grams or ounces.

I'm making pakoras to go with HM curry and chicken kebabs.

Any one able to help?

Dave

Magentasue

Try this:

http://www.beryls.com/weighref.htm

mah_jong

http://onlineconversion.com/cooking.htm


i am sure this was posted here origianlly , I put it in my faves as I use it for all sorts. There is a section for cooking.

HTH

mah

dsdl23185

Thats great!

thanks for the quick replies :beer:

Dave

squeaky

As for cups - the americans work by volume rather than weight.

You can usually buy plastic cup sets in pretty much any supermarket - but for recipes that are ALL cups you just need to use any old cup or mug you like, and as long as you use THAT mug for all the ingredients the proportions will work out fine.

In the meantime - an american cup is 240mil and a european one is 250mil

Hardly worth bothering about the difference.

To get quantities right for a recipe that's one cup of something and everything else in in tablespoons etc there's a way to sort this out.

Put a mug or glass on your scales (glass is better 'cos you can mark it) and zero them. Now add water until the scales show 250grams. This is where you can stick a bit of label or sticky tape on the outside of this glass to mark the water level.

THAT is one cup

Just dry the glass off and fill it with flour or sugar (whatever) to that level and your recipe will be right.

If you happen to have a smaller glass or tumbler that comes to about 250 when full it's even easier

HOLsale

Magentasue wrote:

Try this:

http://www.beryls.com/weighref.htm

I hate to be contrary but as an american ex pat (who took several semesters worth of foods classes in high school) i have to say that this particular page holds many errors :-(

1 cup = 8 fl oz
2 cups = 1 US Pint (16 oz)
(UK pint is 20 oz)

Squeaky, whilst you can make your own american measuring cups by doing as you suggested you'd want to use the second conversion page mentioned http://onlineconversion.com/cooking_volume.htm which i have used many times myself and i can vouch for it's accuracy. you'll find too that an american cup is actually 236.5882375 ml which may seem anal rentive to quarrel over BUT if you are baking and adding raising agents like bicarb (baking soda) baking powder or cream of tartar using incorrect measurments can affect the quality of the outcome (for things not using raising agents it's generally not so fussy) also you get into further problems when you double or divide recipes and so on and so forth.

once again, using any old mug as a 'cup' and sticking to that as a cup works ok in anything that doesn't require precise measurements (like chutney) but not so well when making a batch of muffins or a complicated cake or gateau because once again the ratio of the ingredients in your 'cup' to the teaspoons and tablespoons will be all wonky if you see what i mean

i know all this very well from many mistakes in cooking when i first moved to scotland 6.5 years ago :eek:

you could do squeaky's route of measuring amounts out in a cup and marking them. i'd recommend using 8oz of water as this will be easier to mark out than 236.5882375 ml that would then be the mark to fill for ANY item in an american recipe that calls for a cup: milk, butter, nuts, meat, marshmallows, chocolate, sugar, flour you name it!

you'll want to mark out half and quarter cup marks as well (4oz and 2oz water respectively). but to be honest with you, you can go to asda and get yourself a sturdy metal set of american measuring cups for about £3.50 these are much better than the plastic ones as they don't easily break! (also known from experience!)

the tablespoons and teaspoons differences (1 Tablespoon [UK] = 0.9607599 Tablespoon [US] are very very close and should be fine in all but the most delicate recipes. I am happy to report i've not had a problem here, only with cups vs ml's or grams