At home, bakers have a strong tendency to measure their ingredients by volume, using measuring cups, a practice we’ve learned from ready-made cake mixes and most recipe books. While this is not a bad practice, as we improve our technique, it is worth noting that baking is a science, and a higher degree of accuracy is attained by weighing ingredients. This increased certainty grants you more control over your project and greater satisfaction with the finished product. If you don’t use enough flour in your cookies, they may come out flat, but if you use too much flour, they will be too dry. Neither result is acceptable unless you are happy with a flat or dry cookie. So we see that the perfect cookie is not only a work of art, but also of mathematical cause and effect. Packed brown sugar is a frustrating phenomenon we’ve all seen, where the loose sugar occupies greater space. Measuring cups will not help you determine amount, where a scale will do exactly that. Every baker is both an artist and a scientist, except a skilled baker creates aesthetically pleasing and delicious results!

Deciding on which scale to use is up to you, but there is no need for a large, cumbersome contraption, as a simple digital kitchen scale will work just fine. An added benefit of this method is that there is less clean-up required afterward. No more messy measuring cups, just the mixing bowl, or even parchment paper works well. Finally, calculating by weight instead of volume allows for simpler scaling if you would like to double your recipe, or you only need 12 cookies instead of 24. The math is easier for the baker, eliminating any unfortunate outcomes. As you may have noticed, I’m fond of measuring ingredients by weight instead of volume!

You will find, I supply both volume and weight measurements in my recipes, it’s up to you…

Happy Baking!