American Weights

[SusieTFTF]

Hello,
I love baking and actually design, bake & decorate wedding cakes and would love to be able to join in here - except................I can't make head nor tail of your weights 

What in hec is a 'stick'
Susie x

[Mojavelyn]

How do you think we feel when we have to convert to metric?

take your choice...

http://www.google.com/sea...4&q=metric+conversion

Does this help?

liquid measure

An american cup is 8 oz

pint is 16 oz or 2 cups

quart is 32 oz  2 pints or 4 cups

1/2 gallon is 2 quarts

1 gallon is 4 quarts

1 tablespoon is 3 teaspoons (altho some say 2)

dry weight

1 pound is 16 oz
1 ton is 2000 lbs.

Have I gotten you totally confused yet?

[knappschiles]

As to your original question -- what is a "stick" ?  That would most likely be used in regard to butter or margarine in a recipe. Here in the states it's sold mostly in 1 lb boxes that are divided into 1/4 lb  wrapped "sticks". So 1 stick is 1/4 lb of butter.

Try this site for conversions http://www.convert-me.com/en/
For cooking it would be the "capacity and volume conversion" link

This site is a bit more than most people need  so you will need to scroll down a bit to find the spot you need to enter. But when you enter a number and then click "convert" it fills in ALL the other spots. I will use it when I need to see like "how many tsp in 1/2 cup" or something like that. Then it's just fun to look at some of the other measures to see what they are. It even has old Biblical measures. It has some old French and Russian values too, if you have any really old  heirloom type cook books you wanted to try out.

Carol

[Mojavelyn]

Carol, I just had to go pull a stick of butter out of the fridge.....

weight 4 oz, 113 grams, 8 tablesppons with marks on the stick wrapper... 4 tbs is 1/4 cup 1/3 cup is about 5 tbs and 2 tsp.

Suzie tbs means tablespoon and tsp is teaspoon.

What you should do if you really want to convert metric to american standard is get some american measuring cups and spoons.  Tupperware has really nice sets, expensive, but long lasting and warrentied. VERY long lasting. My mother still has stuff from when she sold it back in the 60s. And well worth it if you are going into using American recipes.

Just be glad you don't have to convert my grandma's recipes ... A handful of this, a bit of that, a pinch of something else.

[SusieTFTF]

  Mo, thats what a lot of my cooking's like too!!

Thanks for the info, thats a great help. I have a lovely set of American cups that my mum bought years ago and I do use them often, it was some of the terminology that completely bamboozeled me 

Will get set to and start converting some of my wonderful old recipes from my grandmas book to share 

[juliartz]

I understand completly your confusion. I have this wonderful German butter cake recipe that I cannot make. The woman who gave it to me? German of course, and everything is in metric. I tried to figure out a conversion, but have not succeeded. So I've been butter cake deprieve for many years.

And the "stick", yes, it means a stick of butter/margerine a/k/a 1/4 c (cup). Also to expand on Mo's list, Tablespoon can also be simply abbreviated as a capitol "T" and teaspoon as a lower case "t".   Some recipes will call for a "PINCH" which is dry measuremnt amount of about 1/16 of a teaspoon, and a "DASH" is about 1/8 of a teaspoon. Not to confuse you more  , but some old time recipes will list that.

[juliartz]

And to add one more thing. Many times while in the middle of baking, you find that you either run out of an item or have forgotten to pick it up. Here is a very good link for item substitution.

http://members.aol.com/re...pedepot/measurements.html

And this link might help sort out some confusion also.

http://www.wikihow.com/Us...Measuring-Spoons-and-Cups

[SusieTFTF]

 

[Mojavelyn]

And for Gawd's sakes.... don't follow my mother's receipes...

I wanted to make 7 minute frosting... aka boiled frosting... gotta cook it in a double boiler. You know the merangue type white really fluffy frosting...

It was a pinch of this, a bit of that, a handful of something  and a dollop of ...  The only part I actually understood was the white from 1 egg.

Still don't know how to make it.


Well, Julie, maybe Suzie could send you some metric measures??

One of my broher's students from Germany had come here fro a visit... and wanted something "decidedly American" to take back to Germany... They ended up with muffin tins, muffin receipes, and a couple pounds of pecans.  Muffins and Pecans are decidedly American.

[knappschiles]

Julie,

Just put the metric measures into that convert me link I posted before and it will spit out the correct American measures for your recipe.

Carol

[juliartz]

Julie,

Just put the metric measures into that convert me link I posted before and it will spit out the correct American measures for your recipe.

Carol

Thank you Carol, I will do that. I've been wanting a German butter cake for many years, and cannot find a bakery around here that makes one.
julz