Cooking measurement converter: cups to grams
American recipes measure in cups and most of the world measures in grams, and that's behind half the failed cakes on the internet. Converting isn't a simple multiplication: a cup of flour weighs 120 grams and a cup of sugar, 200. Same volume, different density.
Pick the ingredient and the tool gives you the exact equivalent in grams, ounces and milliliters.
1 cup of all-purpose flour =
120g
- Milliliters
- 240 ml
- Cups
- 1
- Tablespoons
- 16
- Teaspoons
- 48
- Ounces
- 4.2 oz
A US cup is 240 ml. Measure flour by spooning it into the cup and leveling it off with a knife, without packing: packed flour can reach 150 g, and that's enough to change how a cake turns out.
Why a cup isn't always the same number of grams
A cup is a measure of volume: 240 milliliters in the US standard. Grams measure weight. Going from one to the other depends on how much that volume of a specific ingredient weighs, in other words, its density.
Flour is light and airy: a cup holds about 120 grams. Sugar is denser and more compact: 200 grams. Honey, which is almost liquid and very dense, reaches 340. Using one conversion for everything is the mistake that ruins translated recipes.
Flour has another problem: how much it packs down as you fill the cup. Press it and you can fit 150 grams where 120 used to go. The right way is to spoon flour into the cup without pressing and level it off with a knife.
The kitchen measures you can trust
A level tablespoon is 15 ml and a teaspoon is 5 ml. Those two are constant in volume, although their weight still depends on the ingredient: 15 ml of oil weighs 14 grams and 15 ml of salt, 18.
If you bake often, a digital kitchen scale costs about ten dollars and removes the problem entirely. In baking, where proportions are chemistry, weighing always beats measuring by volume.
Questions
Frequently asked questions
How many grams are in a cup of flour?
About 120 grams of all-purpose flour, spooned into the cup without packing. Packed flour can reach 150 g, and that 25 % difference is enough to make a cake dry.
How many milliliters are in a cup?
240 ml in the US standard, which most online recipes use. A metric cup is 250 ml and an imperial (UK) cup, 284 ml. If a recipe doesn't say, it's most likely 240.
How many grams is a tablespoon?
It depends on the ingredient: 15 ml equals about 8 g of flour, 12 g of sugar, 14 g of oil, 21 g of honey or 18 g of salt.
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