Cups to Grams Converter

The Australian cup is 250 ml, and the tablespoon is 20 ml

When Australia went metric in the 1970s, the standard measuring cup was fixed at 250 ml and the tablespoon at 20 ml, and every Australian cookbook, magazine and packet since has been written to those two numbers. The rest of the world settled on a 15 ml tablespoon, and the United States kept a cup of about 240 ml. That is why an American conversion chart is never quite right here: its cup is 4 per cent small and its tablespoon a full quarter short. The measuring set in your drawer, if it was bought in Australia, is the 250 / 20 / 5 ml standard, and it is the one this converter uses.

How to measure so the numbers hold

• Flour, cocoa, icing sugar: stir the bag, spoon into the cup until it heaps, then level with the back of a knife. Never scoop, never tap the cup on the bench.
• Brown sugar:press it into the cup firmly enough that it holds its shape when turned out. Australian recipes assume “firmly packed” unless they say “lightly”.
• Butter: a 250 g block is exactly one cup, so a quarter of the block is ¼ cup (62 g) and half is ½ cup (125 g). Most Australian butter wrappers are marked in 50 g steps.
• Honey and syrups: wipe the inside of the cup or spoon with a little oil first and the lot slides out.
• Liquids: measure in a jug on a flat bench and read at eye level. A cup of milk weighs about 260 g, a cup of water 250 g, a cup of oil only 225 g.

Converting American recipes

Use your Australian cups for the cups: the 10 ml difference per cup does not matter in a banana bread, and only shows in a big, exacting bake, where you would be better weighing anyway. The spoons are the problem. Three US tablespoons is 45 ml, which is 2¼ Australian tablespoons, and baking powder, salt and yeast are all measured by the spoon. A US “stick” of butter is 113 g, or ½ US cup. If a recipe says “1 cup packed brown sugar” it means the same firm packing we use. Set the converter to a US cup or a US tablespoon and it does the arithmetic.

Converting British recipes

Almost all of them are in grams already, so cook as written. Their tablespoon is 15 ml, and a “dessert spoon” is 10 ml. Be careful with cups in old British books: before metrication a British cup meant half an imperial pint, 284 ml, and a chart built on that will put an extra 20 g of flour in every cup.

When to weigh instead

Cups were invented for convenience, not precision, and the same cup of flour can weigh anywhere from 140 g to 180 g depending on who packed it. For bread, pastry, macarons, anything you scale up for a crowd, and any recipe already written in grams, weigh it. A digital scale with a tare button (so you can zero the bowl, add the flour, zero again, add the sugar) is the single cheapest upgrade to your baking. Our kitchen scales rankings cover the ones worth buying, and if you are converting the oven setting as well, the oven temperature converter handles fan-forced and Fahrenheit.