An Important Note about Measurements

One of the very best things I did while writing this book, was enlisting a small army of Stonesoup readers to help test the recipes.

Having lived (and baked) in England, France, California and Australia, I thought I had a decent grasp on global baking terminology but I learned so much from the feedback of all those generous volunteers from around the world. Thank you!

One tester, in particular, caught my eye…
“As an American baker who tends to measure things in cup measures it’s tricky for me to know how to convert to ounces (8 ounces in a cup doesn’t seem like an accurate measurement for certain ingredients, like peanut butter). I suppose giving measurements in cups rather than ounces might help people like me but I think I should just get a scale.”

My answer, of course, is YES! Please invest in a set of scales.

And here’s why…

5 Reasons I Weigh my Ingredients

1. Weight is much more accurate.
For baking it’s super important to get your measurements right. Using cups (volume) can be really variable depending on how tightly you pack the ingredients in. This can lead to variable baking results (and more chance of failures. No!). Baking is tricky enough as it is, so I prefer to remove this potential cause of problems.

2. Cups can be confusing.
There’s the problem of metric cups being different sizes to imperial (American) cups. A cup isn’t just a cup.

3. Quicker and easier.
Just pop your container on the scales, hit the zero button and add your chosen ingredient. Soo much easier than messing around with scoops and cups and leveling off.

4. Less mess.
No need to get all your cups dirty. Just weigh directly into your bowl / saucepan / food processor.

5. No need to convert!
My scales can weigh in either grams or ounces which is sooo brilliant. I love using recipes from around the world and now I don’t need to convert. I just change my scale to use the appropriate units.

Which Scales?

You don’t need to spend a fortune. Just go for digital scales that are easy to ‘zero’ and a design that’s easy to wipe clean.

If you use recipes from different countries, good to check that it can use both grams and ounces.

Still Prefer Cups & Spoons?

If you’re not convinced and want to stick with your cups and spoons, please email me (jules@thestonesoup.com) and ask for a refund. I’ll be truly happy to return your money if you aren’t going to love (and use) this book.

All my baking recipes are written by weight so they aren’t going to work well for someone using cups (unless you want to spend hours with online converters).