I imagine that your cups, sticks of butter etc are much more time efficient than our version of measuring everything. I certainly wouldn't be accurate as I've never used them LOL

I'm sorry, watching that woman mugging for the camera about how difficult it was to measure the normal way (even staggering to the sink with two used bowls) was bloody painful. The messy cupboard shot at the beginning was even worse. Seriously, even if you're not a regular baker, would you just toss your ingredients into the cupboard willy nilly and let them fall where they may? She should just give up on baking.

I saw that show, too, pillog. I thought the whole idea of this product was ridiculous. And it made me crazy when she complained about having to dispose of batches of cookies that didn't consistently work out correctly. I am, admittedly, a casual sort of measuring gal but I've never had cookies turn out bad, unless I burned them. Heck, I even can turn out a great loaf of bread without any fancy measuring device.

Reminds me of those As Seen On TV commercials for 'marvelous' new inventions: "I can make iced tea at home? Really?"

Colleen, agreed on all points!

Pugga, I have no doubt that your casually measured cookies are great! If measuring errors are what is making the cookies bad (which I kind of doubt anyway), accurate measurement is dead easy to learn!

Carol, that's hilarious! What it's really saying, besides that their research shows that people who don't mind eating meat are grossed out by touching it, is that people want squished burgers! I thought the point of homemade burgers was to have them lightly patted into shape without squishing, so they'd be tender and juicy, unlike the prefab hockey pucks. OTOH, people have been selling burger presses for at least fifty years, and if you want one, the thing you posted looks easier to use than most.

Interestingly, King Arthur has a totally different technique. I was always taught by mother to scoop, run the knife through to cut large air bubbles (never tap), and then level. This video instructs to fluff first, then spoon and sprinkle into a cup, and then level. They show a dramatic difference in flour weight.

Cool! Interesting vid, Gooster. I haven't done a trial, but I think that would come out fairly similarly to my method, where the decompacting comes when you pour the flour into the canister. The compaction is more from the bag of flour being sealed and stacked and weighted in shipping than from the cup, though sticking a cup into a bag of flour is never a good choice just from having too small an opening to work in. Of course, if you have a scale, why would you need to use cups!

The real secret, however, is that it's the proportion rather than the measure that really matters in baking. That's why it's more important that your cups and spoons are accurate to each other than to the official standard.

One thing I've never understood, and it makes me flee from recipes with cups, is how do you measure a cup of butter or any other solid?

Butter isn't all that solid! You measure it the same way you would any other fat. You have to soften the butter to bake, anyway, so if it's in the fridge, set it out on the counter for awhile. Once it's malleable, just press it into your cup with a spoon until it's full to the brim with no air pockets, and level, then use a scraper to pop it out and into your mixing bowl.

Or go with equivalencies: 1 lb. = 2 cups of butter or full fat margarine.

In the U.S., 1 box = 1 pound = 2 cups = 4 sticks
(Do check the label to make sure it's really a pound.)

My stick of butter says 113.4 g on the wrapper. That's a half cup. Or cut off a small knob from a French butter brick (250g) for buttering your pan, and you'll have about a cup. Or just use the whole brick. :)

Unlike flour, there's no variation with butter, so if you were using a cups recipe but had your scale, you could just weigh the butter.

There are standard equivalencies for flour too, but when I use them to convert recipes they aren't accurate enough and I would have been better off doing it by eye. There's so much variation in flour anyway, depending on the fineness of the milling, protein content, etc., that I'd much rather use the same kind of flour as the recipe calls for as possible, and the same way of measuring, if I want it to be just like the recipe. If I'm just using the recipe as a guide, but want to make it my own way with a different kind of flour and/or sweetener, then I just do my own thing and try to keep the proportions fairly similar to get the best outcome, and it doesn't matter how I got there.

As for other things, we have a lot of modifiers. Brown sugar is measured "packed". That is pressed and molded into the cup. Spinach leaves are measured packed as well, though you don't pack hard enough to squish. Raisins are just measured more or less to the line, as they fall, but people always put in more or less to their own tastes anyway. There are also times you might "pack loosely" or not at all. YES, a scale would be ever so much easier. Our tradition started from the days of expansion and settlement when every kitchen had a tin cup or scoop but it was highly unlikely they'd have a scale. A lot of the women (most home cooks were women) had very little education and cooked and baked more by feel than by measures of any kind. A "receipt" was a list of ingredients with no quantities nor directions. It was assumed that if you knew how to bake, you knew what to do with them. The apple pie recipe that my mother handed down to me says something about how to prepare the apples (overnight), but for the rest it's "use a standard crust" and "bake", because why would you be concerning yourself with a different method for making an apple pie if you didn't know how to make a pie?

Very easy way to measure solid fat is by displacement. For instance, if you need 1/3 c. of lard, fill a liquids measuring cup with water to the 2/3 cup line. Add solid fat, submerging it in the water, until the water hits the 1 cup line.

IOW's 2/3 cup water plus 1/3 cup lard equals 1 full cup.

Less hassle, no need to wait for fats to reach room temperature and the measuring cup is lots easier to clean. Also, very accurate method.

I've learned that you check with the cookbook for what their technique is for measuring, since there are so many different ways to measure flour. I've read some books that do the scoop and level, and some that do the spoon into the cup then level. If you use the same technique that the author does, it should be fine. Now, if the recipe doesn't come from a book that says what their technique is, I'd just use the method you're most comfortable with.

I've never heard of the show you're talking about. What channel is it on?

The show is on Food Network.

@ islay - almost all store bought butter here comes in wrapped sticks w/ tablespoon markings on the wrapper , along w/ measurement equivalents - & if you buy a solid pound, you can just cut it up into fourths, etc...

Our butter comes in solid blocks. I wish they came in sticks like yours does. Actually we "can" buy premium butter in sticks at twice the price.

I cut it in 8 slices, about 1/4 cup, then freeze individually.

I'll stick to scales hahaha

OMG, where to begin before my head explodes!

First, this chic has seen one too many "As Seen On TV" commercials from the Acme school of overacting.

She's got more problems than baking mishaps if she can handle something as simple as measuring ingredients.

The bottom line? I'm insulted! Yup, insulted. It insults my intelligence to think that this woman appears to have decided I am too inept to figure out things on my own.

Granted, before Google, I had to actually crack open a book to get weights and measures, but now? Holy crap, I type in my query and in a nano-second, I have an answer.

And is tare so hard to figure out? She's acting like she's physically and mentally handicapped (which I find offensive), when she's obviously a smart, able-bodied person who is selling an overpriced, redundant, ugly-ass piece of plastic that would make my eyes bleed if I had to look at it everyday in my kitchen.

She doesn't need Kick Starter. She needs a kick in the arse!

This is why I don't bake. Measuring stuff - stresses me out.

The only exception is baking bread. I put a little spreadsheet on my iPhone. Plug in X grams of flour and Y percent hydration and it spits out the grams of water, salt, yeast.

Otherwise, I use my food scale for (1) putting myself on a diet, and (2) putting my bicycle on a diet. I probably weigh more bicycle components than anything else.

Lol, I can measure flour. I keep my various flours in recycled gallon ice cream tubs. I typically have between 4-6 kinds of flour on the shelf at any given time- things like wheat germs, gluten meals, and so on I keep in wide mouth canning jars.

I always use my long metal baking spatula to lift flour out of it's container. If the recipe calls for cups- I loft the flour into the measuring cup, and when it's a bit heaped over, use the spatula to level it off again. If the recipe calls for by weight measure- I use my kitchen scale and again use the spatula to loft the flour in. Never just scoop out the flour with the measuring cup because that can compact the flour, throwing the measure off. I was taught to do it this way by my baking instructor in school- and she was a master baker, so I figure she should know what's up with measuring flour.

I was also taught that cups do not equal weight, and versa- like 8 oz of flour is not the same as 1 cup flour, and so on. Salts measure differently by volume depending on the type too- so if substituting one kind of salt for another, use weight measure rather than volume measure.

And butter, yum. Around here I pick up butter that is already quartered into sticks for more regular use, and stock it up when it goes on sale. I also pick up butter pound blocks when it's on sale too- and cut it up as needed. Typically I use the pound blocks when I'm going to be doing a lot of baking, or making compound butters.