Today, I want to share a little kitchen experiment I did with molasses. See, I’ve got this killer recipe for gingerbread cookies, but it calls for molasses in cups. Now, I’m more of a “weigh everything out” kind of guy, so I needed to figure out how many grams of molasses I needed. I tried to convert it from the recipe, but I always messed it up, that’s why I started this experiment.
First, I grabbed my kitchen scale and a measuring cup. I tried to choose from a variety of measuring tools to find out the exact gram of molasses for each cup, but I realized that most of them are all the same. I put the measuring cup on the scale and zeroed it out. Then, I carefully poured some molasses into the cup, trying to get it exactly to the 1 cup mark. That stuff is thick and sticky, so it took a bit of patience.
Once I had the molasses in the cup, I checked the scale. It read around 280 grams. “Not bad,” I thought. I wrote that down in my little notebook.
Next, I wanted to see if different amounts of molasses would convert consistently. I mean, if 1 cup is 280 grams, then 1/2 cup should be 140 grams, right? I did it like I did before, and I repeated the same process with 1/2 cup and 1/4 cup of molasses. Guess what? Each time the scale read close to half and quarter of the 280 grams. I also tried to measure the weight of 3/4 cup, it turned out to be around 210 grams. Cool beans!
- 1 cup of molasses = around 280 grams
- 1/2 cup of molasses = around 140 grams
- 1/4 cup of molasses = around 70 grams
- 3/4 cup of molasses = around 210 grams
After I finished all the measurements, I tried to convert other cups into grams, including 1.1 US cup, 1.2 US cup, etc. I did the math, and I found out that I can multiply the number of the cup by 280 to get the grams, and it did work! For example, 1.1 cup times 280 equals 308, and 1.2 times 280 equals 336. It’s pretty accurate!
Conclusions
So, there you have it. My little molasses experiment was a success! Now I know that 1 cup of molasses is roughly 280 grams, and I can easily calculate other amounts using that ratio. I can just multiply the number of the cup by 280 and I will get the number of the grams. Next time I make those gingerbread cookies, I’ll be all set. Plus, it was kind of fun to play around in the kitchen and figure this stuff out. Maybe I’ll tackle another baking conversion conundrum next week!