Too many baking recipes have volume instead of weights for the dry ingredients! (I’m looking at you, Irma Rombauer…) But for best consistency (in terms of repeatability) and consistency (in terms of batter thickness) it is best to use weights. I have had these written down in various places, but really, they would be more useful here on a blog that I never post to.
For flour, I turn to the Greatest Issue of Cook’s Illustrated Ever. Seriously, May/June 2009 had the greatest chocolate chip cookies EVER, excelling instructions on how to butterfly and grill a chicken, and the Magic Table of converting different types of flour from volume to weight … whether the recipe calls for sifted or unsifted flour!
Flour
| Type of Flour | Weight of 1 Cup Unsifted | Weight of 1 Cup Sifted |
|---|---|---|
| All-Purpose | 5 ounces (142 gm) | 4 ounces (114 g) |
| Cake | 4 ounces (114 g) | 3.25 ounces (92 g) |
| Bread | 5.5 ounces (156 g) | 4.5 ounces (128 g) |
Sugar
Granulated sugar is easy to do, but brown sugar usually says “packed”. What does that mean? It basically means packed to the same density as granulated flour. So 1 cup of granulated/light brown/dark brown sugar is 7 ounces (198 g). That’s it.
Cocoa
1 cup of cocoa powder weighs 3 ounces (85 g).
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