I'm thinking of converting to weighing my ingrediants as I lost count last night as to how many cups of flour I had put into my bowl (got distracted) and thought that if I had it on a scale that wouldn't be a problem.

Any other reasons to bake by weight?

Some of you bake by weight and not by cups-how do you do this if the recipe is listed by cups? Do you weigh a cup of flour and from then on use that weight to go by, or is there a standard weight for flour, sugar, etc?

I find cooking by weight to be much easier, faster, and more accurate. I use the Cake Bible most of the time, which lists ingredients both by volume measurements and weight.

Shirley Corriher has a book out called "Cookwise" and that has a wonderful chart that lists weights of all sorts of baking products. 1 cup of shortening, 1 cup of butter, 1 cup cake flour, 1 large egg, etc. I find it helpful when I want to fool around with making my own recipes.

In the Well Decorated Cake, Toba Garrett lists the following:

Four, confectioner's sugar, cocao powder: 1 cup-= 110 grams

Granulated sugar: 1 cup = 230 grams

Butter, Margarine, shortening: 1 cup =230 grams ( I know from experience that 1 cup hi-ratio shortening weighs 6.5 oz, which is less than regular shortening)

1 large egg= about 50 grams (without the shell)

corn syrup and molasses: 1 cup = 336 grams

I bake by weight-been doing it for years. It's really the only accurate way to measure ingredients, plus I find that it's much faster (and less clean-up) that measuring with cups.

Get a good quality, digital scale that is accurate.

ditto. All my recipes are by weight. And if it didn't start out that way, I measure in cups then weigh out that ingredient, then write that weight right on the recipe. Weighing is mor accurate and you can weigh everything right into the mixing bowl.

Thanks so much for the answers! I will look for those books. Ohh, I didn't even think about less clean up!

Thank you all for your help.

Here is a web site that list ingredients by weight for you hope this helps
http://www.fareshare.net/conversions-volume-to-weight.html

Thank you. I am so glad that I found CC, it's so nice to know that there is always someone here that can help.