American recipes...

[Picante]

Is baking soda the same as baking powder or bicarb?

How big is one of their 'cups'?!?!

yes to baking powder/bicarb

a cup is 236.64 ml

(had it on the counter!)

hth

No but which one? baking powder or bicarb? Or are they both the same thing?!

THanks for the cup measurement.

Baking soda is bicarbonate of soda.

sorry, meant to say that b soda is same as bicarb.

b soda and b powder are different things - b powder has b soda in it, as well as starch and cream of tartar - you can't really substitute them.
(have just don science lesson on raising agents!)

No baking soda and baking powder are not the same. Or maybe they are but they're used differently. You would use soda in recipes that have sour cream, yogurt or buttermilk, and also in choc chip cookies. Baking powder would be used in recipes that require non-sour dairy ingredients, for the most part.

When you use a measuring cup, you're using a volume measurement, not a weight measurement. If you have a container that holds 8 fl oz, then that could be used as a cup measure.

250 mL is the standard conversion for a cup even if that's not precisely accurate.

SOME USEFUL CUP CONVERSIONS

Please note that these are approximate

1 cup sugar = 200g
1 cup icing sugar = 125g
1 cup flour = 140g
1 cup rice = 200g
1 cup frozen peas = 125g
1 cup fresh breadcrumbs = 70g
1 cup grated cheese - 100g
1 cup chocolate chips = 175g
1 cup sultanas = 150g
1 cup honey/syrup = 300g
1 stick of butter = 110g = 4oz

When recipes call for a cup you can just use an average mug of your own, and just use the same mug for all the measurements in the recipe.

Thanks all! Managed to make a rather lovely banana choc chip loaf - used a kid's plastic cup as measure!

Thanks Stirling, very handy indeed.

I'm Canadian and most Canadian cookbooks have both metric and imperial measures in them, so you learn to 'translate' recipes in your head! I'm sure it's more precise to have conversions by ingredient but I have never gone wrong with 1 cup = 250 mls of anything...even when using flour or dry ingredients.

fyi when an American recipe calls for baking powder, you should use double the amount because American baking powder is "double acting" - concentrated in some way I guess.