Bóymoder Measuring Basics
There are 2 ways of measuring ingredients for recipes: volume and weight.
Volume is what people are probably most familar with, teaspoons, tablespoons, cups or mililiters.
- A teaspoon is defined as 5ml
- A tablespoon is defined as 15ml (so, 3 teaspoons)
- A cup is defined as 240ml (so, 16 tablespoons)
Measurement by weight might be unfamilar to the new boymoder housewife but it's the best way to get precise, consistant amounts of ingredients.
It also allows you to save on dishes to wash, many recipes can be made by simply having your bowl above a scale and adding the ingredients as you go.
Packing
Measuring some ingredients (most notably, flour) with volumetric measurements can be deceiving as they can be packed, fitting more of the ingredient in a cup than you might expect, or not enough.
Some ingredients can't be packed, like liquids and granulated sugar.
Some ingredients are measured while they are packed, like brown sugar.
Some ingredients are measured while they are fluffed, like flour.
Flour
Flour is a crucial ingredient in many recipes, and it's quite easy to over measure, leading to doughs that are tougher than they are supposed to be and batters thicker than they are supposed to be, or even in case of cakes, might cause it to collapse!
The correct way to measure flour is using a scale.
But it is also acceptable to use cups if you know what you're doing:
- Use a spoon to fluff up the flour in your bag/jar or whatever, don't want anything packed in there
- Then spoon out a bit of fluffled flour and sprinkle into your measuring cup
- Once the flour has filled the cup, level it off
That can lead to pretty consistant results, good enough for most recipes.
(just use a scale please they are cheap)
If a recipe here didn't include volumetric measurements, it's because you really shouldn't be using them for that recipe.