(no subject)

[pensnest]

How does one measure 3/4 cup butter without going mad?

Seriously. I don't use cup measurements often, but butter measured in a cup sounds ridiculous. What do I do?

Comments

[topaz119]

3/4 c butter is roughly 6 oz (a stick and a half if your butter comes 4 sticks to the pound. I haven't had enough caffeine yet to do the metric conversion, sorry!)

Or, put a cup of water in a 2-cup (or larger) measuring cup and then drop the butter in until the water level rises to 1 3/4 cup.

[pensnest]

Right. My butter used to come in 8oz bars, now 250g, but I can deal with ounces. Thank you! i have a set of cup measures, but no 2-cup, but aiming for 6oz will do nicely.

This year may just be the year I bake Christmas cookies. I keep meaning to...

[anotherslashfan]

Eyeball it?
Or google for some cup-volume conversion?
I'm from Germany, so we usually use metric measurements, but as far as I know, being precise when measuring - at least when it comes to baking - is overrated anyway. If you have a description of what the texture of your mix should be like, just try and go with that?

[pensnest]

Friends lists are better than Google sometimes (see above)!

I'd always heard that baking requires precision, whereas cooking requires flair. It seems so to me, since I am a casual sort of person and can cook just fine, whereas baking mostly escapes me. But this year, I am determined to try it.

[anotherslashfan]

Ahaha, yes, topaz119 made a more useful suggestion ^^ Which I didn't see before my comment was posted...

In any case, I agree that successful baking seems to often rely on one knowing a recipe's "secret". Might not just be precise measurements; sometimes it's timing, temperature, or one mistake you just shouldn't make ^^. Cooking's more forgiving that way.

[pensnest]

I suspect I don't bake often enough to get good at it. You have a good point there about the 'secret' of the recipe.

[fleurrochard]

You could use the conversion table on this site. According to it, 3/4 cup of butter are 180 g.

[pensnest]

I still kinda think in ounces for cookery - probably because I don't measure what I cook often enough to get used to grams. (I still remember the terror I felt in an Austrian delicatessen when I had to ask for stuff by quantity, and had *no* idea how many grams of bean salad I wanted!)

[chalcopyrite]

I feel your pain. (Most of my recipes/cookbooks being American in origin.) One pound of butter is 2 cups, so a) 3/4 c. is 6oz, as Topaz already said, and b) when I get butter (one pound block), I mark it with a knife roughly into quarters, so I have more-or-less half cups ready to go.

[pensnest]

Do you get butter in pounds where you are? Ours has been metrificated for quite a while - it *looks* like 8oz, but I think it's 250g, which is a bit more.

[chalcopyrite]

The labelling is metric, but butter still comes by the 454 grams. wry g I'm going to have to check the smaller blocks now, though, to see if they're 227g or 250g!

[pensnest]

Damn it, now I'm going to have to go downstairs and see how big my butter blocks are!

250g, with markings to divide it into five sections.

[chalcopyrite]

I did not mean to cause midnight butter-measuring crises! But now you know for certain: yay? *g*

I had to check in the supermarket today -- the smaller blocks here are indeed 227g. So the matter of international butter measurements has gotten even more complicated, and Chris' face sums up my feelings completely!

[joyfulseeker.livejournal.com]

Butters in the states have gradations marked on the wrapper, and then you just cut down with a knife at the proper marking. Don't know if that'll help in a non-cup-based system! alternately, find the density of butter, convert the 3/4 cup measurement to a mass, and just weigh it out on a scale...

Looks like 3/4 cup is 177 mL, and the density of butter is .911 g/mL. Therefore 3/4 cup is ~162 grams. If this helps?

[pensnest]

When we had butter in oz (8oz blocks) we had that, too. We now get it in grams, and I think the little markings divide the bars into 1/5ths, tho' I'd have to go downstairs to check (so we may never know).

I think I'll go with what Topaz said on DW and make it 6oz. I still think in oz anyway, for cooking.

[nopseud]

I typed '3/4 cup of butter in grams' into Google, and it gave me this butter conversion calculator, on a site which looks useful for all kinds of things.

[pensnest]

See, that sounds like work to me! I just typed it onto my DW journal, and had an easy-to-use answer without having to work for it! Ahem.

Though I am still baffled by the idea of giving butter requirements in cups *because it is stupid*.

[hsb.livejournal.com]

I once read a full page on a US baking site about how to properly measure flour without it settling and messing up your volume measurement, at the end of which she suggested that to test that you were doing it right, you should weigh your cup of flour and it should be X grams.

The reason most US recipes I like get tranferred to LJ is that I translate all stupid cup measures into weights. Particularly baffled by things like a cup of chopped veg. Why?

H

[pensnest]

at the end of which she suggested that to test that you were doing it right, you should weigh your cup of flour and it should be X grams.

GAH!!!

At least you *can* put chopped veg in a cup, though it could lead to an enormous variety in actual quantity of veg, depending on how finely you chop.

Butter? Nah.

Cup measures are great for some things, but daft for others.

[pensnest]

That said, that looks like a nice little site. Ta!

[originalrahrah.livejournal.com]

is it a matter of conversion or convenience? does the butter wrapper have markings? do you have a measuring cup?

[pensnest]

I think it's mostly that I am baffled at the idea of measuring butter in 'cups'. Because, no. I'm prepared to look up (yet again, as it is information that refuses to stay in my head) the size of a 'stick' of American butter (ours are bigger), because that is a sensible way to measure the stuff. Otherwise, butter must be weighed!

I do have a set of measuring cups, and for sugar, or water, etc, this system perfectly sensible. (Though see hsw's comment above re measuring flour in cups - that's a lot of trouble to go to!) But to be asked to add 3/4 cup of butter makes no sense to me. :-)

[(Anonymous)]

OK. I don't know where I saw this but if you put 1/4 cup water into the measuring cup and then put in the chunks of butter until it hits the 1 cup line, you will have 3/4 cup butter. The butter and the water don't mix so just pour off the water and use the butter. It works for me.

[solariana.livejournal.com]

Be thankful you didn't have to learn to cook from my mother.

Me: "How much *whatever* should I put in?"
Mom (from the other room): "Oh, about yea (yay) much."
Me: "How much is yea much?"
Mom (holding her hands or fingers so far apart): "You know, about so."

On top of that, she often used the term *yea much*, but at one point it may mean a cup or two or a teaspoon another time, or a pinch yet another time. There is NO consistency to the measuring of *yea much*!

[pensnest]

Ahaha! That's actually how I measure most of the things I cook - if it looks 'about right' it'll probably do. Which is not terribly helpful if I'm trying to transmit a recipe (or method) to someone else!

[msktrnanny.livejournal.com]

I'll trade your annoyance for measuring butter in cups for my absolute consternation at nobs of butter and setting the stove at 2 or 3. :-)

[Give JM a big hug for me tomorrow, would you please?]

[pensnest]

A knob of butter is only a blob on the end of a knife and the butter-fondness of the cook is more relevant than the actual quantity there, but I very much agree about the 2 or 3 settings, given that I haven't used a gas oven since I was at school.

Mind you, having to find my conversion chart for Fahrenhiet vs Centigrade is irritating, which I assume you also find (in reverse)!