Using butter...there has to be a better way?

I LOVE to cook and bake. This is what I will be focusing on during the six weeks before the wedding when I can't work. I'm excited to get back over to Scotland and cook for my husband-to-be.

Only one problem...THE BUTTER. CURSE IT.

I will miss how convenient butter measurement is here. You buy a stick, it has those nice convenient markings for where to cut for a tablespoon. But I have yet to find a SINGLE STICK at a Scottish grocery store with markings on them. Not to mention the sticks are all kinds of crazy shapes/sizes. Now, I'm a perfectionist when it comes to cooking. I don't like "eyeballing," especially when it comes to baking. But it is SOOOOOOO annoying trying to measure out butter with a TBSP measure! Is there some crazy gadget I'm missing that makes this all so much easier? I mean, there just has to be a better way?

The gadget you need is a scale. British recipes will use weight measurements so you will need to weigh the butter.

The gadget you need is a scale. British recipes will use weight measurements so you will need to weigh the butter.

He already has one of these. And yes, I've made some British recipies that use grams and that's pretty simple. But I have a lot of American recipies I love, and I want to be able to cook those too!

http://www.traditionaloven.com/conversions_of_measures/butter_converter.html

http://www.traditionaloven.com/conversions_of_measures/butter_converter.html

That is brilliant! You're my hero LegsAkimbo! Bookmarking that one now!

Also, see Chary's cooking thread in the Just Do It section of UKY.

Grab a copy of the Pie and Pastry Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum. It has a great table at the front with imperial and metric weights for a cup of pretty much every common baking ingredient. I bake using my scale all the time, even when using my mom's and grandmothers' recipes. As an example, I know by heart that 1 cup of granulated sugar is 200 g.

Most of my recipes are from the US.  I still have measuring spoons and cups.  I leave the butter out overnight to get soft and it's easier to pack it into your spoon, cup or whatever that way.

you aren't going to find nice sticks of premeaured butter.

I've converted most of my baking recipes to weights and use my guestimate method for cooking. I would bring over us measuring cups and spoons because they are slightly different (one of my cups is 240 ml, the other 250 but I can't remember which...).

I find this to be a great website because their conversions are specific to ingredients. For example, a cup of butter won't be the same number of grams as a cup of flour, so you have to choose the exact ingredient you're converting:

http://www.gourmetsleuth.com/cooking-conversions/cooking-conversions-calculator.aspx

I found a bar of butter with marks for 25 grams the other day at Tesco.  It's no tablespoons, but it will help with any British recipes you try or help with conversions without weighing.  I'm not home to see what brand it is just now, but I'll update when I am if you like. 

I found a bar of butter with marks for 25 grams the other day at Tesco.  It's no tablespoons, but it will help with any British recipes you try or help with conversions without weighing.  I'm not home to see what brand it is just now, but I'll update when I am if you like. 

Yup, I've seen this butter too. But, honestly, I prefer weighing because it's more accurate. I do use my old US cookbooks, but I've written in the metric conversions (for my fave recipes) to make things easier for myself.

I nearly have it memorised from Chary's cooking thread in the Just Do It section of UKY:

A pound (four US sticks) of butter is 454 g.  Butter here is generally sold in 250g blocks, so just a little over half a pound.  That's where I start with my butter conversions.

So, it follows that one stick of butter is 113.5 g!    (Most things I bake need more than 1 stick so I don't have to worry about the .5 - not that it matters that much anyway.)

I saw DW cramming butter into a measuring cup and then found the conversion online for it so she could use the electronic scales.

Nearly all the big blocks of baking-style butter (as opposed to the tubs of butter for spreading) have measurements marked down the foil like in the US. Usually in 50g increments but I've seen 25g, too. But because the sticks are wider, it's a lot more accurate to use a scale than to rely on the marks!