Some pages you read once and forget. This one you will pin to the fridge. Everything below uses the standard methods professional test kitchens rely on: spoon-and-level for flour and powders, packed for brown sugar, softened for butter. For the full interactive versions with 40+ ingredients, use the grams to cups converter — this sheet covers the numbers that come up most.
Volume basics
| Unit | Equals | Millilitres |
|---|---|---|
| 1 teaspoon (tsp) | ⅓ tbsp | 4.93 ml |
| 1 tablespoon (tbsp) | 3 tsp | 14.79 ml |
| 1 fluid ounce | 2 tbsp | 29.57 ml |
| ¼ cup | 4 tbsp | 59 ml |
| ⅓ cup | 5 tbsp + 1 tsp | 79 ml |
| ½ cup | 8 tbsp | 118 ml |
| 1 cup | 16 tbsp | 237 ml |
| 1 pint | 2 cups | 473 ml |
| 1 quart | 4 cups | 946 ml |
Cups to grams for the pantry staples
| Ingredient | 1 cup | ½ cup | ¼ cup |
|---|---|---|---|
| All-purpose flour | 125 g | 63 g | 31 g |
| Whole wheat flour | 120 g | 60 g | 30 g |
| Granulated sugar | 200 g | 100 g | 50 g |
| Brown sugar (packed) | 220 g | 110 g | 55 g |
| Powdered sugar | 120 g | 60 g | 30 g |
| Butter | 227 g | 113 g | 57 g |
| Cocoa powder | 100 g | 50 g | 25 g |
| Rolled oats | 80 g | 40 g | 20 g |
| Honey | 340 g | 170 g | 85 g |
| Milk | 240 g | 120 g | 60 g |
| Almond flour | 96 g | 48 g | 24 g |
| Chocolate chips | 170 g | 85 g | 43 g |
Weight conversions
1 ounce = 28.35 g · 1 pound = 453.6 g = 16 oz · 1 kg = 2.2 lb. For sticks of butter: 1 stick = ½ cup = 113 g = 8 tbsp. One large egg weighs about 50 g in the shell, 30 g white and 20 g yolk (see our egg guide for sizes).
Oven temperatures
The three settings that cover 90% of baking: 160 °C / 325 °F / Gas 3 (gentle, sponges and custards), 180 °C / 350 °F / Gas 4 (the default for most cakes, cookies and breads), and 200 °C / 400 °F / Gas 6 (hot roasting, quick breads, pizza). Fan ovens: subtract about 20 °C from the recipe temperature and check early. The full 12-row ladder lives in our oven converter.
Pan sizes at a glance
Recipe written for a 23 cm (9 in) round cake tin? Here is what you need in other shapes — the number is the multiplier for every ingredient: 20 cm round: × 0.75 · 25 cm round: × 1.18 · 20 cm square: × 0.96 · 22 cm square: × 1.17 · 9×13 in (33×23 cm) rectangle: × 1.83 · 23×13 cm loaf: × 0.72. Area, not diameter, drives the math — the pan converter does it for any pair.
Liquid sweetener swaps
Replacing 1 cup granulated sugar: use ¾ cup honey (255 g) and reduce liquid by ¼ cup and oven by about 10–15 °C; or ¾ cup maple syrup (240 g) with the same liquid cut; or ¾ cup molasses with slightly more baking soda added. Every swap changes browning, so watch the crust — details in the sweeteners guide.
Scaling recipes in your head
Double everything by weight and keep the temperature; check 5–10 minutes early. Halve everything by weight and keep the temperature; start checking at about 60% of the original time. Do not scale time linearly — thickness is what drives baking time, and it barely changes when you scale a pan's area. For messy ingredient lists, the recipe scaler does every line at once.
Bookmark the real tools
This sheet is for quick reference; the tools are for everything else. Grams to cups, cups to grams, oven temperature, volume, weight, pan size and recipe scaling — all free, all offline, all accurate to the assumptions printed on each page. Save this article with the heart button and it will be waiting for you next time.
How to use a conversion table without making it worse
A cheat sheet only helps if you read it the way it was written. Every row in the tables above assumes a measuring method: spoon-and-level for flours, packed for brown sugar, softened for butter, liquid for sweeteners. If you scoop flour straight from the bag, your "1 cup" weighs 20 to 30 g more than the row says, and the recipe changes even though the table was correct. Before you convert, check the method note next to the ingredient.
Second, remember that conversions are a bridge to the recipe, not the recipe itself. When a cake calls for 250 g of flour and you have cups, convert once, measure once, and write the gram weight on the recipe card for next time. Every time you re-measure in cups you re-introduce the same spooning variation.
Third, keep the temperature rows separate from the weight rows. Oven temperatures convert between Celsius, Fahrenheit and Gas Mark cleanly, but they have nothing to do with ingredient weight — a "350 F" oven is not "heavier" than a "180 C" one. Mixing the two tables in your head is the most common way a cheat sheet produces a burnt cake.
Finally, print the sheet or bookmark it. A cheat sheet in a drawer is a conversation you forgot; a cheat sheet next to the mixing bowl is a tool that quietly removes guesswork from every bake. If you bake by weight most of the time, keep this page only for the occasional recipe that stubbornly insists on cups.