Conversions

The internet is great for bakers, giving access to so many recipes and so much inspiration. However if can often be a little tricky to work with recipes found online as they may contain terminology or measurements that are unfamiliar. To help with this problem this page contains a selection of conversion charts and some other useful info, I hope this information will be helpful!

Temperature
One of the most important things to get right! Oven temperature can really make a big difference to a bake. Every oven is different and some can be more temperamental than others, if yours is one of the temperamental it might be a good idea to invest in an oven thermometer. That way you can see what your oven is actually doing and adjust as necessary!

Gas Mark	Celsius	Fahrenheit
¼	110	225
½	130	250
1	140	275
2	150	300
3	170	325
4	180	350
5	190	375
6	200	400
7	220	425
8	230	450
9	240	475

For fan assisted ovens set the oven temperature 20C lower than the temperature stated in the recipe. As a guide I normally set my oven to Gas Mark 4 for cakes, pastry and biscuits (unless the recipe says otherwise) and Gas Mark 6-8 for bread.

Weight and Volume
Weight and volume measurements can be really confusing if a recipe uses a system that you aren’t familiar with.  The major systems in use are Metric (grams) and Imperial (pounds and ounces). I was taught to cook using imperial but was forced to learn metric as recipe books don’t always include both these days, so I really have to pay attention when I’m cooking as I find it all too easy to switch between the two!

If a recipe uses gives both metric and imperial measurements choose one to work with, never mix different measuring systems when making a recipe. Why? Because the conversions given aren’t 100% accurate and switching will mess up the proportions of your ingredients! Oddly enough this doesn’t really apply to spoon measurements, I have no idea why!

The charts below list what I think are some of the more useful conversions; hopefully this will be helpful for you to calculate your own conversions. If not it is very easy to find some very useful conversion calculators on the internet.

Weight

Metric	Imperial
25g	1oz
100g	4oz
200g	7oz
450g	1lb
500g	1lb 2oz
750g	1lb 10oz
1kg	2lb 4oz

Volume

Metric	Imperial
30ml	1fl oz
100ml	3 ½ fl oz
150ml	¼ pint
250ml	9fl oz
300ml	½ pint
425ml	¾ pint
500ml	18fl oz
600ml	1 pint
1 litre	1 ¾ pints

Spoon Measures

Metric	Imperial
5ml	1 tsp
10ml	2tsp
15ml	1tbsp
30ml	2tbsp
45ml	3tbsp
60ml	4tbsp
75ml	5tbsp

And at the risk of sounding patronising, tsp means teaspoon and tbsp means tablespoon. I figured this was worth mentioning as I have seen people get the two confused before! On one notable occasion my mum’s flatmate at uni mixed up tsp and tbsp when making chilli. Yeah that ended well...

The Cups measuring system is also very common, especially in America and honestly I would say don’t try to convert cup measurements. It’s very tricky and all you’ll get are approximations, in the long run it’s much easier to just invest in a set of measuring cups which are fairly easy to find. But just remember that Australian and American cup sizes are different. In Australia one cup is 250ml while in America one cup is 240ml. 

A small difference but it can easily add up! So check carefully what size cups are when buying any.

Oh and one final note here on weight, eggs. Unless stated otherwise the eggs I use are UK Large size. I believe that in Australia these would also be large and extra large in the US.  Also in many American recipes I’ve read, I’ve come across the term “a stick of butter”, apparently this is equal to 4oz.