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.

I just mean put the butter by mass, Australian recipes I've followed are in cups then butter in grams as you don't need a kitchen scale for butter, you can just cut it.

Just use bbc best ever brownies, it's a great recipe.

You beat me to it.

Some fantastic demonstrations of hard of thinking on this thread.

It's very clear that the OP has done her research and fully understands what measuring cups are. The problem she is having is that the metric conversions are resulting in different RATIOS of ingredients, which is clearly bad news in baking.

I don't know what the answer is OP. I'm intrigued now and what to do my own experiments! My only possible explanations are

1. you've got a dodgy set of cups. You could check their volume by weighing them and filling them with water - 1ml water weighs 1g.

2. you are over/underpacking the ingredients in the cups

3. the recipes assume your using US ingredients, which actually have different densities to UK equivalents?

4. the standard conversions are all wrong. I don't think this is impossible, everything on the Internet is copied from something else and it may be that the original source had it wrong. Or perhaps the origin of these conversions is out of date and changing food production methods mean that weight to volume ratios have changed since the original conversions were done.

No I had to convert that as well!! And then work out fan to conventional!!!

Well they turned out brilliantly this time. So the moral of the story is that the weight measurements given as a conversion for brown sugar (as I have identified that as the culprit) DO NOT WORK

The weight of one cup of brown sugar that I then weighed out (BECAUSE I HAVE CUPS) is not the same as the cup-weight converters. Mine was 165g, the converters have it at 220g. That is a massive difference and no wonder my previous attempts where a bit off structurally, although flavour was lovely

The cocoa powder measurement is also off although Im not sure that would have made a massive difference to the texture last time

And to confirm again why I dont want to rely on cups is because its difficult to put things in them that are not cup friendly, plus its more washing up. I find cups ridiculous
I also want to calculate the calories for the recipe and that is very inaccurate using cups, as we can see.

Good point

Not sure, Aldi brown sugar is what I have

That is a really good point about the eggs, because other recipes use no where near the number of eggs and I wondered if that was right

I admit that last night I used 4, not 5 as I thought it was just too many.

Because I had become suspicious, from previous attempts, that the metric conversion in the recipe was not accurate, so I wanted to test the weight of the item in the cup. Obvious surely?

Of course I didnt include the cup weight!!!!

What drama? Are you never curious or interested to work out something that hasnt gone quite right, so you ask a question

Im amazed at the number of suggestions for me to go and buy cups when it is obvious from the OP that I had identified a difference with the convertions (which are standard conversions, not just that recipe and I had set this out) by weighing my own cups. I therefore have cups. It becomes frustrating that people dont seem to read the OP properly (although I do see it all the time on here)

Exactly this

And by investigation (or drama as others like to call it), I have now identified what the issue is

The standard conversions for sugar (brown in particular) doesnt correspond with the weight of a cup of brown sugar, but does work for white sugar

The recipe uses too many eggs as another poster pointed out and I had also become a bit suspicious of

The cocoa powder is also off, although it may not have a massive impact so much

Obviously my own weight, after consumption will also be massively impacted. I wont convert that, because I wont be looking at it. I will be in complete denial!

I'd say the sugar they want is the fine dense kind that would be heavier for volume.

I bought a cup measurer (is that even a word?!) for a couple of pounds from B&M a couple of years ago. I got so cross trying to convert stuff!

Brown sugar absolutely should weigh more per cup than white, light brown slightly less than dark. It's definitely denser. There are dodgy conversion sites out there, but I use the King Arthur one myself so I can confirm it is accurate. Flour is the trickiest ingredient for weight conversion as differences in measuring style (dip and sweep, spoon into cup, sift first) make for a different weight, but American white flours all weigh about the same per cup (wholemeal does not though) so British flour shouldn't be any different.

There are differences between US and UK ingredients such as flour but in the case of a brownie recipe none of them are significant. The densities don't really vary very much. I've been in the USA over a decade.

Honestly in my experience you are safer using the conversion chart than trying to do your own approximations. Using your own conversions only really works when you're an experienced baker by volume and know what "your" cup is. Any recipe that's so finicky it can't handle conversion should have been put into weights in the first place like professional recipes -- even in the US, professionals bake by weight.

This thread proves to me why I have always avoided US baking recipes. Cups are such a shite / imprecise way of measuring and conversion tables just can't work that well because it depends what you are weighing/ measuring. They often turn out too sweet too.

I like Jane Asher's brownie recipe, but it is more sponge like than brownie, or Delia's if I want a more brownie like one.

Depends if it's cooked slower. I used to use a banana bread recipe with a lot of banana and egg but about 45 minutes cooking time.

Trivial fact:
The cups system came about in America during pioneer times when families didn’t have weighing scales but all had cups. Recipes were published in newfangled newspapers.
Maybe it’s time to move on…

But banana bread is meant to have a cakey texture and has a rising agent in it. It's a whole different chemical reaction.

I used the chart. I used the conversion also on the recipe.

That king arthur conversion also is incorrect compared to what the cup weighed when I weighed it.

My point was that recipes vary. Some have two eggs, some four, with longer cooking times for the ones with more egg and banana to dry ingredients. There's a big variation on what still works.

Yes, I understand.

Mine was that most with 4 eggs are either cakes that rise or ones with puddingy or shuffle-like centres.

In a recipe with that amount of flour and cocoa powder (which reacts somewhat like flour), no raising agent and that number of eggs, it's going to be a bit like pushing a boulder uphill to try to get the middle past a pudding-like texture. This one also has a large amount of melted butter relative to the dry ingredients. Both of those things make it possible the issue was as much with the recipe as with the conversions.

Because I had become suspicious, from previous attempts, that the metric conversion in the recipe was not accurate, so I wanted to test the weight of the item in the cup. Obvious surely?

Of course I didnt include the cup weight!!!!

Thanks for clarifying. I wouldn't have asked if it hadn't been clear to me.

The big question is, though, why you are trying to weigh the ingredients when they are clearly given in cups, and you clearly have cups?

Cups work perfectly.

Measured ingredients work perfectly.

There's no need to do both or to convert. Stick with one or the other. If you don't own a set of American measuring cups, but you are keen to use American recipes, I recommend buying a set.

If you used demerara sugar, it is too coarse grained and dry, and can't pack. It will affect your result.

American brown sugar, both dark and light, is fine grained, like castor sugar, but also sticky - it doesn't pour, and you can pack it in the measuring cup as if you were packing damp sand into a bucket on a beach. Soft brown sugar would work well.

Because I prefer to weigh things. As do many people. I also work out the calories per portion of things, you cant do that accurately with cups. As evidenced

I did it again today, the brownie and the weights (because I tested it again given that people were so sure I had made some sort of mistake with the 'converter' or my cups (lack of cups) and the weights are more or less the same again, so the conversion given in the recipe, particularly for sugar and cocoa powder is incorrect

And so that its clear - the conversions given in the recipe is EXACTLY the same as standard conversions, including this much lauded King Arthur website, they're all the same.

However funny enough the batter is a lot stiffer and there is less of it. But I think thats because I thought I would use even less eggs and I think its a mistake, I will use 4 next time.

Bit worried that it might turn out dry now, using only 3 eggs

We'll see

I dont know if its American dark brown sugar, its just from Aldi, but it certainly is sticky. Sticky all over my hands, the worktop, the spoons, the cups!!!