Use a Kitchen Scale for Easier Holiday Baking

Did you know you can use a kitchen scale to simplify baking and everyday cooking? No need for scoops, measuring cups and a leveling knife. All you need to get started is a kitchen scale and information about the weight of ingredients.

It's as easy as this: if your recipe calls for 1 cup of flour, use a baking ingredient conversion chart to find that 1 cup sugar is equal to 200 grams. Place your bowl on the scale, tare it to zero, and pour 200 grams of sugar. No cups, no leveling, no mess. If you do nothing more than remember the gram weights of sugar (200 grams) and flour (128 grams) you'll still save time and mess every time you bake this holiday season.

A Kitchen Scale Makes Baking Easier

• Easy accuracy. Almost all U.S. recipes call for volumes of ingredients measured in cups, teaspoons and tablespoons, e.g., 1 cup flour. But the amount of flour in that cup depends on many things including how much the flour is compacted, how well you level the cup, and whether air pockets are present in the flour. A kitchen scale, on the other hand, gives you an accurate measurement each time.
• Fewer dirty dishes. With a kitchen scale, you simply zero out the weight between steps and eliminate the need for cleaning a slew of measuring cups and the extra step of leveling the cup.
• Tame sticky ingredients. Instead of wondering how much honey, molasses or peanut butter is still sticking to the measuring cup, just pour or scoop out the correct weight directly from the container.
• Simplify favorite recipes. Convert ingredients to grams once and go. Your favorite recipes will be easy and you can be assured that the dish will turn out the same each time!

Tips

• Convert any recipe to gram weights in a single click at certain recipes sites like allrecipes.com.
• Use the kitchen scale for measuring the big ingredients like flour, sugar, brown sugar, butter, cocoa, chocolate, water and milk and switch back to measuring teaspoons for baking soda, baking powder, salt and spices. A good rule of thumb – if you want to measure less than ¼ cup, use teaspoons and tablespoons and for more than ¼ cup, use the kitchen scale.
• Keep a copy of common ingredient conversions in a handy place in your kitchen. You won't need to spend extra time looking up conversions.
• Make sure your scale remains accurate. Calibrate your scale or test the weight of a cup of water periodically to make sure the scale is still functioning.

We recommend OXO's Food Scale with Pull-Out Display, recently touted by The New York Times as one of the best scales on the market. This scale includes many standard features like a zero function and an optional backlight. But true to OXO form, there are some useful innovations that make using this scale even easier than most:

1. A handy pull-out display makes it easy to read measurements when using a large plate or bowl, which might shadow or obscure the display
2. A convenient indicator displays how much capacity is left, so you don't find yourself maxing out the scale in the middle of a complicated recipe
3. A removable plate for convenient cleaning (handwashing only)
4. A thin profile for convenient storage in tight spaces

OXO 11 lb Food Scale with Pull-Out Display

OXO 5 lb Food Scale with Pull-Out Display

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