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.

The problem is the sugar measurement

Every single converter chart is the same, as I said I spent a lot of time googling this, they are all standartd converters

Brown sugar on those charts and my recipe says 1 cup is 220g give or take

My measurement when weighed in my cup was 165g. Thats a big difference.

I’m no contender for bakeoff @soupfiend, I make things that look a bit iffy at times but taste fairly good on the whole. I can’t decorate at all though.

I am possibly a bit too slapdash, but I make stuff in the wrong tins all the time. I couldn’t find the loaf tin recently and put a loaf cake mixture in a round tin and no-one died and it tasted just the same.

I’ll happily put a recipe for an 8 inch cake in a 7 or 9 tin for example.

Yes because brown sugar is for packed down measurement. It should all come out of the cup in a single lump.

Trust me -- just use the KA converters. Also a cup of butter is standard in America, 8oz. Same in weight as volume.

(And yes an American cup is 236ml instead of 250, but to be honest it doesn't make a difference 99% of the time, Canadians round up because they've gone to a "metric cup" like Oz did!)

You don't. Otherwise you are just converting one volume to another, which is a waste of time. You need to covert volume to weight, and you can only do that by actually weighing a cupful.

One cup of rice krispies is going to weigh a heck of a lot less than a cup of sugar, for instance, even though they are the same volume.

This is why I stick with imperial measurements. Using spoons not scales.
1 tbsp - 1 oz
HTH

This is incorrect though - 2 tbsp = 1oz.

Canadian here - we use cups and teaspoons, so volume. I don't even own a scale. I have a hard time with UK recipes, but occasionally manage one from BBC.

Op, I think you are overthinking things; like others have said, just get some cup measurements. I've used 1 cup = 250 ml which is volume, not weight.

I also find the 'stick of butter' very confusing, but generally it is 1/4 lb. Luckily our butter still comes in 1 lb blocks, so easily divided. We are a country of mixed measurements; officially metric, but recipes are in imperial volume.

I use a heaped tbsp - it works for me

I mean if you’re following a recipe with cup measurements and want to use the cups. I agree it’s easier to measure butter using grams, but then I would easier to measure dry ingredients such as flour or sugar by filling a cup and certainly I find it’s easier for water/ milk/ oil to measure by volume. I can see arguments for measuring both by weight and by volume and don’t think one is inherently better. If you don’t want to follow a recipe with cups that’s of course understandable, but it then makes sense to find a recipe where the weights are already in grams rather than messing around trying to convert.

JUST. USE. THE. CUPS.

Why on earth not?! It’s really not necessary to be extremely exact, especially with brownies. If you know they taste so amazing you’ve made them before? So do what you did then. Or someone you know gave you the recipe when you tried their amazing brownies? So ask them what they did….

And shock horror it doesn’t even have to be an actual measuring cup. Could use a mug! 😯

Serious overthinking going on here.

Brownies are the easiest thing to cook. Nigella’s are lovely.

https://www.nigella.com/recipes/brownies

You can even toggle between cups and weight should you wish to

Cancel the cheque! 🍵☕️🏆

Is it possible that the US recipie gives a temperature in °F but UK uses °C and you've just really undercooked your brownies??

You can weigh them.

Stand on the scales and check your weight. Then get a partner or someone you trust to hold them up as in take the weight of them in their hands. Check your new weight and the difference is the weight of your boobs.

Google has conversion charts for everything. Then you use a measuring jug. But it is easier to just buy a set of cup measures. You can get them everywhere in the UK now. I brought my set home from USA in the 80s! I had never heard of them back then.

As others have said the brown sugar is one ingredient where it must be very tightly packed into the cup. When you turn it out into the bowl it should come out perfectly formed in its shape, like a perfect sandcastle.

Butter doesn’t translate well because in the US no one is putting it into actual cups, the sticks themselves are each half a cup. So it’s quite easy to cut and measure them. I simply google for a conversion to grams and I’ve always been fine.

American here. Since you have American measuring cups, just use them. No need for unnecessary complication. Pack all ingredients loosely in the cups and level with a knife edge, except for brown sugar, which is tightly packed into the cup.

The US is weird! I found this on a website!

“For liquids 1 cup is the same as 240ml (US) or 250ml (UK) - there will be no difference to the quality of your baking based on the 10 ml difference.” why and how are the amount of ml different?

There is no universal formula for conversation, volume and weight are totally different. No two different things of the same volume have the same weight.

Just give in and buy a set of cups, 1/4, 1/3, 1/2 and 1 cup. A set of the different sized spoons, a large jug for liquid volumes and a weeny one that'll measure up to about 2 tbsps of liquid which is nicer to use than the spoons. It'll cost you about £15-£20 and last loads of years

American ounces and pints aren't the same as British Imperial. the USA standardised on the Queen Anne gallon a few years before the UK adopted the Imperial gallon. So an American cup has 8 x 29.5mL fl.oz. = 236mL, with 2 cups to the pint. American pint = 473mL (16oz), UK pint = 568mL (20oz).

A UK "cup" is really a metric approximate equivalent. Canada and Australia also use a 250mL cup. It makes everything simple - 4 cups to the litre, same as the American 4 cups to the quart.

I never convert them, I just use a Tala cup for American recipes

Volume is just a shortcut to avoid weighing, and American recipes work perfectly well if you stick to cups.

The ingredients will all have been weighed when the recipe was tested, and the proportions will all be correct.

Do you imagine American bakers all end up with inedible messes after a baking session?

American butter weighs one pound per package and comes in its little box divided into four 'sticks', each weighing 1/4 lb. The sticks are marked into eight tablespoons, each weighing half an ounce.

One stick is half a cup.
Half a stick is a quarter cup.
5 and 1/3 tablespoons is 1/3 of a cup.

So it's easy to measure cups of butter.

For PB or Nutella you would scoop out those ingredients and drop them into a measuring cup, pressing down to avoid bubbles. It's not a huge amount of work.

You would eyeball green beans. Most recipes calling for ingredients like that are very forgiving.

I happen to have a container of cocoa powder in my pantry that weighs 8 ozs/ 227g. One cup - loosely packed, not tamped down - would weigh about 90 g. If you sifted it, you could expect it to weigh about 75 g.

But it's far more sensible to follow American recipes as written, in volume. Buy yourself a set of cups.

What sort of brown sugar are you using?

American brown sugar has the consistency of castor sugar.

oh man we learned to bake brownies in grade 7 home ec.

you make it sound so difficult, no scales involved.
yes coco powder is light as a feather, you don't pack it down. just scoop the 3/4 cup one twice OR the 1 then the 1/2 cup measure.
brown sugar is tricky as we were taught to use demerara brown sugar it's very dark, sticky and you pack it down till firm.