Cups to grams, ingredient by ingredient
A cup measures space, not weight. What a cup of flour, sugar, butter and honey actually weighs, and why scooping flour is the usual reason a bake comes out dry.
An American recipe asks for a cup of flour. A European one asks for 120 grams. They mean the same thing only if you know what a cup of flour weighs, and a cup of honey weighs almost three times as much as a cup of flour.
That is why the Conversion Charts in Kitchen Tools & Recipes have a tab called Baking Weights: one row per ingredient, the weight of a cup and of a tablespoon, and a note wherever the note matters. The figures follow King Arthur Baking’s published weights, the table most American recipes are written against.
A cup measures space
A US cup holds 8 fluid ounces: 16 tablespoons, or 48 teaspoons. Fill it with water and it weighs about 236 g, which makes water the one ingredient where volume and weight nearly match. Everything else depends on how dense it is and how tightly it packs.
| Ingredient | One cup | One tablespoon | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Flour, all-purpose | 120 g / 4.25 oz | 8 g | Spoon into the cup and level. Scooping packs in up to 20% more |
| Flour, cake | 113 g / 4 oz | 7 g | |
| Flour, whole wheat | 113 g / 4 oz | 7 g | |
| Sugar, granulated | 200 g / 7 oz | 12.5 g | |
| Sugar, brown | 213 g / 7.5 oz | 13 g | Packed, which is what recipes assume unless they say otherwise |
| Sugar, confectioners’ | 113 g / 4 oz | 7 g | Sift before measuring or it packs |
| Butter | 227 g / 8 oz | 14 g | Two sticks. One stick is 113 g |
| Oil, vegetable | 198 g / 7 oz | 12.5 g | |
| Milk | 227 g / 8 oz | 14 g | |
| Water | 236 g / 8.3 oz | 15 g | The only one where volume and weight nearly match |
| Honey, syrup, molasses | 340 g / 12 oz | 21 g | Oil the cup first and it will actually come out |
| Cocoa powder | 85 g / 3 oz | 5 g | |
| Oats, rolled | 89 g / 3.1 oz | 5.5 g | |
| Salt, table | 292 g / 10.3 oz | 18 g | 1 tsp is 6 g. Kosher salt is about half that by volume |
The full tab in the app has 27 rows, from chocolate chips and peanut butter to baking powder and baking soda.
Why flour is the one that matters
Flour packs. Dip the cup into the bag and drag it out, and it can hold 140 g rather than 120. That is a fifth more flour than the recipe wanted, and it is the usual reason a cake or a batch of cookies comes out dry.
Spoon the flour into the cup instead, then level it off with the back of a knife, and you land near 120 g. Better still, put a bowl on a scale and weigh it.
Three more that catch people out
- Brown sugar is measured packed. Recipes assume it unless they say otherwise, so press it into the cup.
- Butter comes in sticks. A cup is two sticks, 227 g, and one stick is 113 g.
- Salt depends on the salt. A teaspoon of table salt weighs 6 g, and kosher salt is about half that by volume. Use table salt spoon for spoon in a recipe written for kosher and you can end up with twice the salt it meant.
Liquids are easier
For water, milk and stock, measuring by volume works well, and the Liquid Volumes tab lines up fluid ounces, teaspoons, tablespoons, cups and milliliters. One fluid ounce is 2 tablespoons or 6 teaspoons; a cup is 8 fluid ounces, or 240 ml.
The Weights tab does ounces and pounds against grams (4 oz is 113 g, a pound is 454 g), and Oven Temperatures gives Fahrenheit, Celsius and gas mark side by side. Those are the numbers an oven dial actually carries, which is why 350°F sits next to 180°C rather than 176.7°C.
Where to find it
Open Charts, choose Conversions at the bottom, then Baking Weights at the top. It is free, it needs no signal, and in version 3.3 you can tap the pin at the top right to put that tab on the app icon’s press-and-hold menu or give it a phrase for Siri.
