Anyone recommend me a US baking book / one that uses cups as measures?

[FireOverBabylon]

DS is 3. We have some measuring cups which DS finds much easier to use when measuring flour / sugar, as he obviously has no concept of grammes / measures on our digital scales. I've found a cheap colourful set of measuring cups in wilkinsons which will be going in DS's stocking at christmas, but I'm looking for a recipe book which uses cups instead of grammes / ounces for cakes etc so that we can bake together using cups instead of scales.

Does anyone have any titles you could recommend? They don't have to be for children specifically but it would be helpful if they had a recipe for gingerbread men.

TIA.

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bump in case any US mums are now with us

Could you make him some recipe cards if you can;t find anything? There are loads of individual recipes if you google and lots of sites have a button to click to convert to cups/metric. Might be nice to have a file or box of cards that he can add to when he thinks of things he'd like to make.

Ooh, that's an idea - I've printed off the giner cake recipe on another baking thread which happened to be in cups.

We could make him his own recipe book cum scrap book thing.

Thanks for replying to me Nora! I'll have a ponder......

And you could put photos of the ingredients on there so he could find them himself! I am now seriously considering this for DS2' present. Have you bought him his own wooden spoon too? DS2 loves his!

Aldi have a children's baking set in at the moment, I got one for The Cub, he will be so proud using it after Xmas.

Sorry slightly off topic, Nigella likes to use cup measurements though.

Had you thought about starting your own recipe book that you can do with ds and leave notes? I am really looking forward to handing ours on. If you put dates in as well it will make a nice piece of history.

AndIShallBeLookingAtNotEatingFunStuffWhenTheCubIsBakingTiggaxx

The Silver Spoon is the River Cafe Cookbook of east coast USA.

I have a cup measure which says how many g of flour/sugar/rice up one side and the equivalent cup measure down the other.

Sorry, silver palate, not spoon!

www.amazon.com/Silver-Palate-Cookbook-Anniversary-Edition/dp/0761145974

Lots of baking recipes.

Moosewood is good too

We already have wooden spoons and bowls (with as steep sides as I could find to stop flour escaping when stirried). I've just got him his own multi-coloured measuring cups on a ring and a flexible coloured spatula to help him scrape out. I'll possibly get him a balloon whisk as well because mine is a big long for him to manage.

Interesting about putting pictures on for him - he already charges off to the kitchen to get ingredients out at the first sign of baking, but doesn't always come back with the right things. Dough improver, icinig sugar and plain flour weren't needed for our Christmas cake!

These are the recipes I've picked out so far as possibles for DS and his cups (Confectioners sugar is icing sugar if it's mentioned):

Brownies
Banana Muffins
Blueberry Cobbler
Lemon Squares
Gingerbread men
Oatmeal peanut butter cookies

god, Americans don't do low fat do they?

House & Garden do a good paperback cookbook.
Betty Crocker used to be the fictional version of Delia Smith, but recent revised cookbooks weren't as good - all obsessed with calories and cholesterol and starting with a lot of US-only packaged foods.

I use a lot of cup recipes but they are from South African Websites/books. They tend to work in cups too. One of our best recipes is 3-2-1 cookies. 3 measures flour, 2 measures butter and 1 measure sugar. You can use any container as long as you use the same on for all ingredients, mix it all together and bake at 170 for 10-14 mins until golden brown. We often use different sugars and add spices or swap some of the flour for cocoa.

If you were to buy nigella or Jamie Oliver books in north America you'd find the recipies had all been changed from grams to cups, so try looking on amazon for the other sellers and see if any are being shipped from US, tho postage would be dearer.

If you want something more instant, go to foodgawker.com, tastespotting.com or foodblogsearch.com. The first 2 are assorted recipes from blogs all over the web with pictures and recipes that you can search by keyword, and the last one is just a search engine for a lot of websites that you type in what you want to make, and it pulls from over 3000 blogs. (Oops, guess I should have made links, but too full from Thanksgiving dinner to think straight.)

If you use American recipes you are going to have to translate oven temp back to celsius from fahrenheit.

Watch out for items like baking soda and baking powder too and make sure you are using the right one.

Also, make sure you have a spoon measuring set to go with your cup measures. Tablespoon, teaspoon, etc., mean specific volumes in US baking and a random teaspoon or pudding spoon from your drawer should not be used. A tablespoon of butter is 1/32 of a pound (US still measures in pounds and ounces). American butter comes in 'sticks', four to a packet, each one weighing a quarter pound (8 tablespoons) and the tablespoons are marked on the paper wrapping each stick for easy cutting. With a British packet of butter you are going to have to do a bit of work to mark and cut a tablespoon.

One old American cookbook I have is The Settlement Cookbook (I have the 1976 edition -- there are earlier and later editions). It's a comprehensive 'feed the family for fifty years' sort of book but the baking section is good, for cookies, breads, rolls, and cakes.

marthastewart.com has nice baking recipes.

Most mainstream Australian cookbooks have cup measurements also (last time I checked!) I much prefer this as well rather than faffing about with kitchen scales.
The Australian Women's Weekly range of cookbooks are great and widely available in the UK.
(Before I forget, an Australian tablespoon for cooking purposes is 20ml whereas I think its 15ml here?)
Hope that helps!

Australian cups are different sizes from American, be warned.