Help me make sense of cup sizes to gram conversions, they dont add up. Literally

[soupfiend]

So here is the american sizing (Its an American website/recipe)

• 1 1/4 cups unsalted butter, melted
• ▢1 1/2 cups light brown sugar
• ▢1 cup granulated sugar
• ▢4 large eggs, room temperature
• ▢2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ▢1 1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
• ▢3/4 cup all purpose flour
• ▢1/2 teaspoon kosher salt
• ▢1/2 cup chopped hazelnuts
• ▢2 tablespoons hazelnut butter, substitute chocolate hazelnut spread
• ▢flaky sea salt, optional

Here is the metric conversion they give

• 284 g unsalted butter, melted
• ▢330 g light brown sugar
• ▢200 g granulated sugar
• ▢4 large eggs, room temperature
• ▢2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• ▢129 g unsweetened cocoa powder
• ▢94 g all purpose flour
• ▢0.5 teaspoon kosher salt
• ▢60 g chopped hazelnuts
• ▢2 tablespoons hazelnut butter, substitute chocolate hazelnut spread
• ▢flaky sea salt, optional

Here is what the cup sizes worked out to be when I weighed them

1.25 cups of melted butter is around 270g (almost the same as recipe)
1.5 cups of brown sugar (although I realised it was dark brown, although it looked light brown), is 235g (much less than the recipe)
1 cup of white sugar is 200g (same as recipe)
3/4 cup of flour is 98g (same as recipe give or take)
1.5 cup of cocoa powder 183g (much more than recipe)

When Ive made this before, I have stuck to the metric and found it so runny (its a brownie) that it virtually doesnt cook and it falls apart. Today's was a bit more solid, but I wont know until tomorrow if its ok

So what do you do when converting from cups to grams. I googled cups to grams and the conversion above is what is on google but it doesnt add up when you weigh the cup amounts yourself.

Another recipe I have calls for cups and things like butter, you cant put that in a cup and try to make sense of it, you would have to squish it all in. Same with peanut butter.

Cups
Work on volume not weight. Get a set of cup measures on Amazon.

I've no idea on the cups to grams thing.

But this is my current favourite brownie recipe.
https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/best-ever-chocolate-raspberry-brownies

It's British so no cups needed.

Cross posted, don't shout at me!!!

But why, when there are 50g lines on the block of butter and I can just look and cut if given a mass?

Its in the OP!!!

Ive stopped shouting now

To be fair most US recipes call for sticks of butter, not cups.

I bought an American baking book recently and there was a big section on conversions and what that meant for different types of ingredients, and there is so much variance between them and how they should be treated - so for example a cup of brown sugar would be expected to be ‘packed down’, also is it 1.25 cups of butter, melted or 1.25 cups of melted butter? There are also different cup sizes (standard Australian and American cups are different).
Or the person that wrote the recipe has got it wrong for some or all the ingredients.

Very easily in a measuring jug!

Oh, well this always used to confuse me as cups come in all sorts of shapes and sizes so I never understood how you could do a recipe this way. Until I went to Aus and bought some 'cups' measures there - and they had mg listed on them. I have since assumed it was therefore a straight 1 cup = 250mg. Ie just assumed 'cup' was American short hand terminology for that weight, and since then i've always converted on that basis, no matter what was being measured! I haven't had many disasters that way, though I do tend to look for British (sensible ) recipes to avoid the ridiculousness.

That looks lovely but it reminds me why I was sticking to certain recipes, I have a 9x9 tin and a 8x8 tin and thats all I have space for, that recipe is for a 20cm by 30cm. Not sure exactly what that is, except to say, big.

American cups are not the same size as British cups - 236 ml to 250 ml. Telling the OP to buy cups won't help, unless they buy American ones.

I think you either have dodgy cups @soupfiend or you are over complicating it. I haven’t ever had a recipe failure using cups or mls or a conversion. Or even mixing them up in a recipe.

Maybe you just have a shit oven or cooking just isn’t your thing.

You really don’t need to be that precise, chuck it in the 9x9 and it will come out just dandy.

I've made those. They were a massive hit.

Yes I measured out 270g of butter (as thats all I had) and once melted it was around 265g and when measured IN MY CUP MEASURES, it was around the same as the recipe, so that seemed fairly accurate.

But I would be peed off to try to pack a cup full of butter to measure it out.

Oh ok, Im not a natural baker as I say, Im a bit scared of all the sizing, the tins etc

I will give it a try as I love fruit and chocolate together.

20 x 30cm is about 8 x 12 inches. So agree 9 x 9 as long as it's deep enough.

The cups I have are 1 cup = 250ml

I'm British and live in America. Stick to the conversions on the King Arthur Baking website. They're the best (their recipes are great too and they do them by weight as well!). Cocoa, by the way, should weigh 90g per cup so you are really packing it tight.

I never bake by volume, I convert everything to weight, and it all works.

Can’t you just get a set of measuring cups from Amazon?

https://www.kingarthurbaking.com/learn/ingredient-weight-chart

Oh, and if you ever encounter it, in America a stick of butter is a standard measure of 4oz.

I didnt pack it at all, I just poured it out of the container into the cup on the scales

That was the book I got - massive section in the book on conversions.

OP I just avoid any recipe that uses cups . Genuinely don’t understand,I am very intelligent 😂

Buy measuring cups, mine were £1.99