Cooking Measurement Converter
Fractions are fine: 1/2, 1 1/2 and 1½ all work, as do decimals.
Volume and weight only relate through the ingredient's density.
Result
240 grams
Using flour (all-purpose) at about 120 g per cup
- You entered2 cups
How this was worked out
- In millilitres2 × 236.5882 mL per cup = 473.176 mL
- As US cups473.176 mL ÷ 236.5882 mL per cup = 2 cups
- At the density of flour (all-purpose)2 cups × 120 g per cup = 240 g
Spoons and cups here are US customary: a US cup is 236.6 mL and a US tablespoon 14.8 mL, against a 250 mL metric cup, a 15 mL UK tablespoon and a 20 mL Australian one — so a recipe from elsewhere is not measuring what this is. Cup weights are conventional averages and the packing is yours: scooped flour can be 20% heavier than spooned flour, and brown sugar depends entirely on how hard it was pressed in. Only the listed ingredients have a density; for anything else, convert within volume or within weight and do not cross between them. For baking, weigh — a scale removes all of this.
Cups, spoons, millilitres and grams
Recipes cross borders and cooking measurement systems do not. An American recipe measures flour in cups, a British one in grams, a European one in millilitres for liquids and grams for everything else. This converter moves between them, and — crucially — will convert a volume into a weight when you tell it which ingredient is involved.
That last step is the one other converters get wrong. Volume and weight are only related through density, so there is no such thing as "cups to grams" in the abstract. A cup of flour and a cup of honey are the same volume and nowhere near the same weight.
A worked example, and why the ingredient matters
Two US cups of all-purpose flour is 0.4732 litres, which at the conventional 120 grams per cup is 240 grams. The same two cups of honey, at 340 grams per cup, is 680 grams — nearly three times the weight for exactly the same volume.
The ingredient list carries a conventional weight for each: water 236 g per cup, milk 244, granulated sugar 200, packed brown sugar 220, butter 227, oil 218, uncooked rice 185, rolled oats 90, cocoa powder 85, flour 120 and honey 340. Working the other way, 500 g of flour is about 4.17 cups and 250 g of honey is about 0.74 of a cup.
Conversions that stay within volume or within weight need no ingredient at all — a tablespoon is 14.79 ml and a teaspoon 4.93 ml whatever is in it.
Which cup, and which spoon
The measures here are US customary. That is one of several standards in circulation, and the differences are large enough to matter in baking:
- A US customary cup is 236.59 ml. The US "legal" cup used on nutrition labels is 240 ml.
- A metric cup, standard in Australia, New Zealand and modern UK recipes, is 250 ml — about 6% more than a US cup.
- A Japanese cup is 200 ml, and an old imperial cup was 284 ml.
- Australian tablespoons are 20 ml, four teaspoons rather than three, which is enough to spoil a raising agent.
Why weighing wins
Cup weights are conventional averages, not measurements of your kitchen. How flour is loaded into the cup changes its weight by up to 20%: scooping straight from the bag compacts it, while spooning it in and levelling gives a much lighter cup. Published values for a cup of flour range from about 120 to 145 grams for precisely this reason, and the figure used here is the lighter, spoon-and-level convention.
For anything where the ratio of flour to liquid decides the outcome — bread, pastry, cakes — a set of digital scales removes the whole problem. Volume measurement is fine for liquids, for salt and spices, and for anything forgiving. Treat the gram figures here as a good starting point for adapting a recipe, then adjust by feel the first time you bake it.
A cup of flour, a UK spoon, and scaling a recipe
How many grams is a cup of flour?
About 120 grams if spooned in and levelled, which is the convention used here, and up to 145 if scooped and packed. That spread is roughly a fifth of the flour in a cake, which is why bakers weigh.
Is a UK cup the same as a US cup?
No. Modern British and Australian recipes use a 250 ml metric cup against the US 236.59 ml, a difference of about 6%. Older British recipes rarely use cups at all — they use imperial ounces, which is another conversion again.
How do I scale a recipe up or down?
Multiply every ingredient by the same factor, then treat the tin size and the baking time as separate problems. A doubled cake batter in a deeper tin bakes for longer than the original but nowhere near twice as long, because heat reaches the centre through a shorter path than the volume increase suggests. Start checking well before the scaled time.
What is a stick of butter in grams?
A US stick is a quarter of a pound: 113 grams, half a cup, or eight tablespoons. A recipe asking for half a stick wants 57 grams.
Do I measure flour before or after sifting?
Follow the word order. One cup of sifted flour means sift first and then measure; one cup of flour, sifted, means measure first. The two differ by enough to change a cake, which is one more argument for scales.
Is a fluid ounce a measure of weight?
No, it measures volume, and only for water do the two roughly coincide. A US fluid ounce is 29.57 ml and an imperial one is 28.41 ml, so even the volume is not the same on both sides of the Atlantic.