A cup of flour does not weigh the same as a cup of sugar — and that single fact is why so many home bakes come out dense, dry, or flat. This free baking converter turns cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons into grams and ounces using real ingredient densities, so a recipe that says “2 cups of flour” becomes an exact 240 grams on your scale. It also converts oven temperatures between Fahrenheit, Celsius, and gas marks, so a recipe from any country bakes at the right heat.
Everything runs in your browser with no signup. Pick an ingredient, enter your amount, and the converter does the rest — including a handy oven temperature converter further down the page for °F to °C to gas mark.
How to Use the Baking Converter
- Choose your ingredient. The converter holds 20 common baking ingredients — flours, sugars, fats, liquids, and leavening-adjacent staples — each with its own grams-per-cup density from the King Arthur Baking ingredient weight chart.
- Enter the amount. Type the number from your recipe: 2, 0.5, 1.75 — decimals are fine.
- Pick the from and to units. Go from cups to grams, grams to cups, tablespoons to ounces, or any other combination. Press Swap units to reverse the direction instantly.
- Press Convert. The result appears in a blue box, with the density used shown underneath so you can double-check the math.
- For oven heat, use the temperature tool. Type 350, keep °F selected, and press Convert temperature to get the Celsius equivalent and the gas mark.
Why Weight Beats Volume in Baking
Baking is chemistry, and chemistry runs on mass, not on how fluffy something looks in a cup. A cup is a unit of volume: it measures space. A gram is a unit of weight: it measures stuff. For water the two track neatly — one US cup of water weighs 236.6 grams — but for dry ingredients the gap is huge. One cup of all-purpose flour weighs 120 grams. One cup of granulated sugar weighs 198 grams. One cup of honey weighs 340 grams. Same cup, nearly three times the weight.
The trouble starts with flour, because flour is compressible. How you fill the cup changes the answer by up to 30 percent. The spoon-and-level method — spoon flour loosely into the cup, then sweep a knife across the top — gives the published standard of 120 grams per cup for all-purpose flour. Scooping the cup straight into the flour bag and tapping it level can pack in 150 grams or more. Across a cake recipe calling for three cups, that is an extra 90 grams of flour sneaking in: the difference between tender and tough.
Professional bakers solved this long ago by weighing everything. A digital scale costs less than a bag of good chocolate and removes the biggest source of variation in home baking. Use this converter as the bridge: convert the cups in your old family recipes to grams once, write the grams on the recipe card, and bake with confidence from then on.
Baking Ingredient Weight Chart
The table below shows how much 1 US cup and 1 tablespoon of each common ingredient weigh in grams. All values use the King Arthur Baking standard (spooned and leveled), the most widely cited reference in American baking. The converter above holds these plus eight more ingredients for two-way conversions.
| Ingredient | 1 US cup | 1 tablespoon |
|---|---|---|
| All-Purpose Flour | 120 | 7.5 |
| Bread Flour | 120 | 7.5 |
| Cake Flour | 113 | 7.1 |
| Whole Wheat Flour | 113 | 7.1 |
| Granulated Sugar | 198 | 12.4 |
| Brown Sugar (packed) | 213 | 13.3 |
| Powdered Sugar | 113 | 7.1 |
| Cocoa Powder | 84 | 5.3 |
| Butter | 227 | 14.2 |
| Vegetable Oil | 198 | 12.4 |
| Honey | 340 | 21.3 |
| Milk | 240 | 15 |
Reading the chart: 1 tablespoon equals 1/16 of a cup, so the third column is simply the cup weight divided by 16. Small amounts of leavening work the same way — 1 teaspoon of baking powder weighs about 4 grams, and 1/2 teaspoon of baking soda about 3 grams.
Worked Examples
Weight to volume: cups = grams ÷ grams per cup
Temperature: °C = (°F − 32) × 5 ÷ 9
- 2½ cups of all-purpose flour. 2.5 × 120 = 300 grams. Enter 2.5, cups to grams, with all-purpose flour selected.
- 1 cup of butter. 1 × 227 = 227 grams, which is 227 ÷ 28.35 = 8.01 ounces — the familiar 2 sticks.
- 200 grams of granulated sugar to cups. 200 ÷ 198 = 1.01 cups — just over a cup.
- 350°F to Celsius. (350 − 32) × 5 ÷ 9 = 176.7°C, which is Gas Mark 4 in a conventional oven.
- 3 tablespoons of cocoa powder. 3 × (84 ÷ 16) = 15.75 grams.
Baker’s Percentages: Scaling Any Recipe
Once you think in grams, professional recipes open up through baker’s percentages: every ingredient is expressed as a percentage of the total flour weight, which is always 100 percent. This makes scaling foolproof, because the ratios stay identical no matter the batch size.
Example — a basic bread dough. Flour: 500 g = 100%. Water: 325 g = 65%. Salt: 10 g = 2%. Yeast: 5 g = 1%. Want a bigger loaf with 750 g of flour? Multiply every percentage by the new flour weight: water 65% × 750 = 487.5 g, salt 2% × 750 = 15 g, yeast 1% × 750 = 7.5 g. The dough behaves exactly the same.
Baker’s percentages also make recipes comparable at a glance. A dough at 65% hydration is soft and open-crumbed; at 55% it is firm and easy to shape. A cookie at 20% sugar is barely sweet; at 40% it is a dessert. Convert your recipe to grams with the tool above, divide each ingredient by the flour weight, and you are thinking like a bakery.
Oven Temperature Chart: °F, °C, and Gas Mark
Oven dials disagree across countries, and many older recipes only give a gas mark. The chart below covers the temperatures home bakers actually use. Two practical notes: most recipes are written for conventional (non-fan) ovens, and fan-assisted ovens need about 20°C less than the listed figure.
| °F | °C | Gas Mark | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| 225 | 110 | ¼ | Slow drying, meringues |
| 250 | 120 | ½ | Meringues, dehydrating fruit |
| 275 | 140 | 1 | Rich fruit cake, slow roasting |
| 300 | 150 | 2 | Shortbread, custards |
| 325 | 165 | 3 | Cakes, gentle bakes |
| 350 | 175 | 4 | Cookies, layer cakes, muffins |
| 375 | 190 | 5 | Pies, scones, quick breads |
| 400 | 200 | 6 | Puff pastry, bread rolls |
| 425 | 220 | 7 | Crusty bread, pizza |
| 450 | 230 | 8 | Flatbreads, hot pizza ovens |
| 475 | 240 | 9 | Pizza, searing-hot bakes |
Tips for Accurate Baking Measurements
- Weigh when it matters. Flour, cocoa powder, and powdered sugar vary the most by volume — always weigh these if you can.
- Spoon and level. Until you own a scale, spoon flour into the cup and level it off; never scoop from the bag.
- Know your cup. This converter uses the US cup (236.588 ml). A metric cup is 250 ml — about 6 percent larger — so metric recipes need their own conversion.
- Butter is forgiving. US sticks are marked in tablespoons on the wrapper; 1 stick = 113 g = 8 tbsp = 1/2 cup.
- Check your oven. Home ovens commonly run 10–25°F hot or cold. An inexpensive oven thermometer tells you the truth your dial does not.
- Convert once, write it down. After converting a family recipe to grams, note the weights on the card — future bakes take seconds to scale.
Baking Converter vs. Cooking Converter
Our Cooking Converter handles general kitchen measurements — cups to milliliters, ounces to grams, and everyday volume conversions for cooking. This Baking Converter goes deeper on the things bakers actually need: ingredient-specific densities for 20 baking ingredients, a full weight chart, baker’s percentages for scaling, and oven temperature with gas marks. If you are converting a soup recipe, use the cooking converter; if you are converting a cake recipe, you are in the right place.
Related Calculators
Frequently Asked Questions
How many grams are in a cup of flour?
One US cup of all-purpose flour, spooned and leveled, weighs 120 grams — the standard published by King Arthur Baking and used by this converter. Cake flour is lighter at 113 grams per cup, while bread flour matches all-purpose at 120 grams. These figures assume the spoon-and-level method; scooping straight from the bag can pack in 150 grams or more.
Why do different baking charts disagree about a cup of flour?
Flour is compressible, so the measuring method matters more than the number. King Arthur Baking uses 120 grams (spooned and leveled), the USDA lists 125 grams, and some cookbooks go as high as 140 to 142 grams. When a recipe gives its own gram weights, always use those; otherwise 120 grams per cup is the most widely used standard in US baking.
Is 1 cup always equal to 240 grams?
No — only water and liquids very close to water weigh about 237 grams per US cup. A cup is a unit of volume, so its weight depends on density: a cup of honey weighs 340 grams, a cup of butter weighs 227 grams, and a cup of cocoa powder weighs only 84 grams. This is exactly why baking by weight is more reliable than baking by cups.
How do I convert grams back to cups?
Divide the gram weight by that ingredient’s grams per cup. For example, 200 grams of granulated sugar divided by 198 grams per cup gives about 1.01 cups. This converter does the math for you — just pick a weight unit as the starting unit and cups as the target.
What does spoon and level mean?
It is the standard way to measure flour by volume: use a spoon to fill the measuring cup loosely, then sweep a straight edge across the top to level it. Never scoop directly from the bag or tap the cup, because that packs the flour down and can add 25 to 30 percent more flour — enough to turn a tender cake dry and dense.
How many grams are in 1 stick of butter?
One US stick of butter weighs 113 grams. That equals 8 tablespoons, 1/2 cup, or 4 ounces. Two sticks make a full cup at 227 grams.
Is a US cup the same as a metric cup?
No. A US customary cup is 236.588 milliliters, while a metric cup is exactly 250 milliliters — about 6 percent larger. A metric cup of all-purpose flour therefore weighs roughly 127 grams instead of 120. This converter uses the US cup; if your recipe is metric, convert milliliters directly instead of cups.
What does this baking conversions calculator cover?
Three kinds of conversion. First, volume to weight — cups, tablespoons, and teaspoons into grams and ounces — using a separate weight for every ingredient, because a cup of flour (120 g) and a cup of sugar (198 g) are not the same thing. Second, oven temperatures between Fahrenheit, Celsius, and gas mark. Third, baker’s percentages, for scaling a recipe up or down without breaking its ratios.