Today we're here basically for me to convince you that you should never use cut measurements or
volume measurements as long as you live. They're the devil. We're also specifically focusing on
the difference between volume measurements, the amount of space that something takes up, and also
the weight of a scale, which is more accurate. An investment in a scale — even the cheapest
scale — is better than an investment in the most expensive measuring cup. When we're here at ICE
it is the first lesson that is taught to both the culinary students and the pastry students.
One of the first exercises they had to do today was take flour and scoop flour in different ways
using a measuring cup and then put it on the scale to see the differences. Just doing it like that
the measurement comes out to 137. Instead of scooping they took flour, spooned it into it,
leveled it off and then weighed that. This one right here is 123. so just the very fact that
you're taking a slightly different method every time you're measuring flour gives
you very different results. So to illustrate further let's take some examples of what people
measure when they're measuring a home recipe or from a recipe book. The recipe says measure one
cup of chopped walnuts. Does that mean that you measure the walnuts after they're chopped? How
finely chopped? You really don't know that and what happens is you'll get different results
every time. What if you measure your nuts and then chop them as the recipe tells you?
If you take one cup that comes out to 94 grams.
If you've chopped your nuts before slightly, that comes out to 120 grams.
As you guys can see, there's this huge difference by just what you're using. Now if your recipe told
you measure 120 grams, no matter what, chopped or whole, you'll get 120 grams of walnuts.
Sometimes a recipe will say measure two large eggs the average egg okay is about 50 grams
and they could actually vary really wildly. So if you measure two eggs one time you could come
up with 95 grams. If you could measure two eggs another time you could come up with 105 grams. So
as simple a thing as not using a scale, even for eggs, will give you a very, very varied product.
Here's some dark brown sugar and we'll just fill it up to the top, okay, and a proximal cup.
To start off with, we come up with 129 grams. Okay, basic simple cup measurement. The next one,
if we do a lightly packed — just press it in gently — we level it off. Okay, let's see what the
difference is here, and on this one just lightly packed: 184 grams. That's a huge difference.
Next one: tightly packed and by the way everyone does different things and
everyone puts different pressure on this so it's going to be different for every single person.
Further packed and we come up with 214. It's like the perfect example that every single
thing you do and every single cup you use is going to give you a different product.
They're 100% unreliable. If that recipe tells you 200 grams of brown sugar, that's it. You're done.
It's easy, you'll never make a mistake and your products will come out the same all the time.
These are some chocolate chip cookies that were done this morning,
so these right here are according to the recipe and these were done by weight.
These are the same exact recipe, but these were done by volume measurements,
these were done by cup measurements — teaspoons, tablespoons. We're going to bake this and then
we'll compare later the original and then we'll be able to see the difference. All right, perfect.
Our cookies are out of the oven and if you take a look, this is by weight and these two here
were done by students by cup measurements so there's a marked difference. If i was doing
this by weight measurement they will come out like this every single time without question
working with grams or weight as compared to volume measurements. There's just tremendous difference
so if you want your product to be consistent, come out proper, save dishes,
save yourself a whole bunch of time and make people happy, using a scale is the way to go.