Question for keen bakers

Do you prefer to bake using British metric measurements or using the US cup style measurements???

I prefer the metric measurements, somehow they are so much easier and the recipes always turn out better!

I cannot convert to metric for baking. I just can't! I have a conversion website on my laptop that follows me to the kitchen when I need it. Or I just use US recipes and have all my kitchen stuff imported from the US. Just made my first homemade pie crust today and while it's not as flaky as I'd like, it tastes heavenly!!

I cannot convert to metric for baking. I just can't! I have a conversion website on my laptop that follows me to the kitchen when I need it. Or I just use US recipes and have all my kitchen stuff imported from the US. Just made my first homemade pie crust today and while it's not as flaky as I'd like, it tastes heavenly!!

All you need is a good scale, mine cost £15 and its fab, it measures liquids too! I don't convert, I just measure!

I just recently started to use both.

Don't have a preference for either one.

Highly recommend a good digital scale.

Ditto, I use both. Never have a problem using either, really. It's pretty much US measurements for US recipes and UK measurements for UK recipes.

Makes no odds to me, I bake loosely from recipes both metric and US cup-style, by loosely I mean eyeball measurements ya know about 2-1/2 cups of flour + about 2Tsp of baking powder for American recipes and loosely but a tad more precise 350g of flour and 30mL of oil for metric recipes

Though I still have and use some US recipes, metric is by far more convenient for a few reason:
1. You will probably start collecting recipes here from friends and magazines etc. They will be metric.
2. You will probably start to build up your collection of pans if you're gonna be here for a while.
3. I find it more precise, i.e. is that a packed cup of brown sugar? no it is 400g. Period. 400g; packed, pressed or whatever

Invest in a good and easy to use counter top scales. An additional bonus to a countertop is that all your food here is labeled in metric so if you watch what you eat it is easy to measure 100g of nuts or 30g of cereal etc.

REALLY USEFUL TIP  Find a handy temp conversion chart (make sure it has the 3 scales.- F, C and Gas Mark), print it out and stick it on the inside of a cupboard door so you ALWAYS have it to hand. Nothing worse than not being able to convert 400F to xxxC as you don't always have them in recipe books and you will need at some time, at least for a while.
 
Happy baking 

I use both and i have never had problems with either.  I don't try to convert from one to the other though.  If it is a recipe with metric measurements, I use metric and if it's an American recipe I use those measurements. 

That said, I believe the metric, or rather the weighing system is much better.  Weighing ingredients is much more accurate than using cups, specially for flour.  I wish the US switched to this method;  not metric, just weight measurements.

June

My baking books specify weights. With baking it does need to be pretty precise, so that's really important for that. I'll probably just use the measurements specified in the recipe as well.

All you need is a good scale, mine cost £15 and its fab, it measures liquids too! I don't convert, I just measure!

me too... it's so easy!

okay dumb question then - how do you keep it clean? We had a scale that had a small white plastic top for the ingredients. If you are measuring butter and flour and sugar etc... what do you do? Wash it in between? inconvenient for me when I have several cup measurements clean and ready and can go in the dishwasher!

I haven't really used many American recipes for cooking, so I couldn't really tell you which I prefer, but what confuses me is, for someone with no American cooking utensils, how you know exactly how big a cup is? I have a couple of recipes which, although most of the ingredients are given by weight, a couple will be in terms of cups (such as cornflakes or rice krispies for those chocolate crispy cakes) and I never know if I should be using a small teacup, a medium-sized mug, a large mug, or none of the above!

okay dumb question then - how do you keep it clean? We had a scale that had a small white plastic top for the ingredients. If you are measuring butter and flour and sugar etc... what do you do? Wash it in between? inconvenient for me when I have several cup measurements clean and ready and can go in the dishwasher!

What I usually do is put a piece of kitchen roll in the top when measuring the butter, so that it doesn't make the top sticky. I can then just lift out the butter by the kitchen roll and put it into the mixing bowl/pan etc. I usually don't wash out the bowl inbetween measurements if all the ingredients are going to be mixed together anyway (e.g. if a recipe requires sugar and flour, I weigh them one after the other, without washing). If the ingredients won't be mixed during cooking, then I'll put a sheet of kitchen roll in the top before I weigh each ingredient so there's no residue left in the top.

I seem to use fewer and fewer American recipes/cookbooks as the years pass, so I think I'm mostly all metric these days. If I do need to use an American recipe, I find myself translating into metric (and jotting down the new measurements on the recipe). It helps with shopping, so I know how much of whatever ingredient to buy.

okay dumb question then - how do you keep it clean? We had a scale that had a small white plastic top for the ingredients. If you are measuring butter and flour and sugar etc... what do you do? Wash it in between? inconvenient for me when I have several cup measurements clean and ready and can go in the dishwasher!

I don't think I'd bother washing it, to be honest. I mean, the flour and sugar are all going into the same bowl eventually, aren't they?

My scale is the kind with a flat top that you put the actual mixing bowl (or whatever you're putting your stuff into) on to to weigh. Bad explanation. Sorry. Anyway, it looks like this:

(except it's yellow)

I highly recommend that style of scale. It cuts down on the whole step of putting stuff into the plastic top and then into your mixing bowl. There are loads of cheapies from several different brands on both eBay and Amazon.  

I use a digital scale, you put a plate or bowl on the top of it, use the tare button to get the measurement down to zero, and voila!!!

I use both, depending on the recipe. Since I bought a new digital scale  I find I'm using weights more and more, although I doubt I'll start converting recipes. Mine has a flat top also, so I just use whatever bowl is handy. Including the bowl from my old manual scale. 

I haven't really used many American recipes for cooking, so I couldn't really tell you which I prefer, but what confuses me is, for someone with no American cooking utensils, how you know exactly how big a cup is? I have a couple of recipes which, although most of the ingredients are given by weight, a couple will be in terms of cups (such as cornflakes or rice krispies for those chocolate crispy cakes) and I never know if I should be using a small teacup, a medium-sized mug, a large mug, or none of the above!

An American cup measure is 8 fl oz (US), about 240 ml. I've seen American-style standardized measuring cups at T.K. Maxx and a few other places in the UK. But if you have a liquid measuring jug, that should be fine for things like cornflakes or rice krispies. 

Another one who uses a flat top digital scale.

It's the biz.

If it's a UK recipe, I use metric, if it's an American one, I use my American cups and teaspoons.

Works great!