My signature cookie is the Snickerdoodle. It combines two of my favorites, a good sugar cookie with cinnamon. As a reader of Cook’s Illustrated I came across their recipe for Snickerdoodles several years ago. I’d include a link to it but they have changed their recipe and it isn’t the one I use.
In making these cookies I was getting differing results pretty much each time. Sometimes the cookies would spread more than other times. Or they would come out crispier or another time chewier.
The first thing I realized was the importance of using the exact same amount of ingredients each time. My go to resource of Cook’s Illustrated emphasized the need to weigh ingredients such as flour and sugar. They found that depending on your technique the amount of flour in a cup can vary by as much as 20 percent. How to weigh flour
Along with the information provided by Cook’s Illustrated I researched the art of weighing flour and other ingredients on the web. I found that depending on which web site you visited even the weight of a cup of flour differs.
So the conundrum is which weight to use? Cook’s Illustrated lists 5 oz equals a cup. King Arthur lists 4.25 oz equals a cup. For recipes that list the weight I use that weight. For recipes that just list a volume measurement I use Cook’s Illustrated values when I can find a reference to that ingredient either in an article or recipe. Otherwise I will try the brand name’s website or just Google it. For example that is how I determined how much a 1/4 cup of shortening weighs, 50 grams.
Overtime I have collected weights for the most common ingredients such as sugar, flour, honey, cocoa, peanut butter, etc. Using weight for cocoa is a big help as its fluffiness makes it hard to measure by volume. I’ll post my spreadsheet of conversions I use in the near future.
For some ingredients such as honey or molasses that are a real pain to get all of it out of a cup or other measuring devices I will weigh them as I add them to the mixing bowl. So if a recipe needs a 1/2 cup of honey which is 170 grams for me I will zero out the mixing bowl on my scale and pour the honey into the bowl. You do need to go slow once you get close to the amount you need as taking it back out would be difficult if there are already other ingredients in the bowl.
Getting a scale that I really liked has taken a few tries. The first one I got was a bit fancy looking one from Soehne. Pretty sure I got it from Amazon but since the scale doesn’t show a model number readily and the Soehne website doesn’t show anything that looks like it I am assuming it is no longer available.
The scale works fine but an annoying feature is once you get to 16 and above oz it displays lbs and oz. This adds a step when doubling a recipe for say 12 oz of flour to 24 oz which you have to convert to 1 lb 8 oz. Not high level math but still introduces the possibility of an error.
I got a scale from Kitchen Aid that I thought allowed the scale to remain in ounces so it would read 24 ounces but I was mistaken. Still a good scale and I use it when I need two scales to ensure I divide batter between two cake pans evenly.
The scale I finally got that gets around that issue is the OXO 11214800 Good Grips 11 Pound Stainless Steel Food Scale with Pull-Out Display You can set it so the item is always shown in ounces even when more than 16 ounces. It has a pull out display that is helpful when weighing something in a large bowl that would normally hide the ride out. Also I like that it uses regular AAA batteries, the Soehne uses an odd button battery that many stores don’t carry.
That brings me to units of measure. Should I use imperial/English units such as oz and lbs or go metric with grams? With the ounces turning into pounds on some scales I decided to go with grams. Doubling and tripling a recipe is simple math without units changing. So if a recipe calls for 500 grams of flour and I want to double it we get 1000 grams. With my scale set to grams there is no additional math needed even if the scale goes to kilograms. 1.000 KG
For recipes I use and post here I will list the metric weight of items as much as possible. For liquids measured in cups and ingredients measured with tablespoons or teaspoons they will remain in imperial/English units. In notes I will list the standard volume in case you don’t have a scale.
Once I started weighing my ingredients my results improved quite a bit but things were still not quite there. In my next post I’ll discuss “room temperature” and how that doesn’t equate to the temperature most of us keep our homes.