Confused by my recipes?

As a lot of my readers are from countries other than the UK, I realise my recipes can sometimes be confusing. I thought I would put together this guide to answer a few questions.

Measurements 
This is the conversion table I use when I'm making an American recipe. It should be useful to switch back. Personally I'm a huge believer in having kitchen scales - they're not that expensive and so much more accurate. I prefer to use digital scales. All my measurements are UK metric. I try to put temperature in both C and F, but sometimes I forget - it's easy to google.

Sometimes I state something like 1 1/2 or just 1/2 of an egg. This is because of my scaling down obsession (see below). The way I do this is lightly beat an egg and then weigh it or work out the volume. I then halve this figure and measure that out. If this sounds too much of a pain, just double the whole recipe - it was probably like that originally anyway!

Recipe Sources
I always cite any sources for a recipe under the title of the recipe, even if I have changed it considerably. I try to put links to it if it is online. If there is no source, this means is an original recipe. If you want to write about one of these please acknowledge that it is my recipe.

Scaling up/Scaling down
Because I bake a lot, I often scale recipes down. There are only so many baked goods one person and her friends and family can eat without exploding. I most commonly halve or third a recipe. If it's getting a bit more complicated, I usually do this by working with ratios, often from the number of eggs (see above), as this provides a simple number and they are harder to split.  I do also scale up for big celebration cakes, like my mum's birthday cakes.

My scaling down obsession also means that I use my 5"/15cm and 6"/13cm round cake tins a lot to make cakes, especially layer cakes. It means I can make an impressive looking cake without waste.  My favourite tins are from Alan Silverwood - you can get them on Amazon UK (I'm not sure about US etc). They also have a great range of other tins and moulds.

Ingredients
I try to use the best ingredients I can afford and find. I know some people have trouble finding certain things and the naming differences are sometimes difficult - if I don't explain something, please do ask. As a general rule, here are a few explanations:

I have a lot of different types of sugar. It's a bit of a thing of mine. I don't use normal granulated sugar very often - I almost always use caster sugar (superfine) which has smaller granules. I like to use golden caster sugar where I can, but it's not needed. I also always keep a jar of vanilla sugar - I simply chuck any used pods from ice cream etc into it. I love using brown muscavado sugar, both dark and light - if you can't find any, Joy the Baker will help you make it: how to make brown sugar. I also always have icing sugar and demerara on hand. I know a lot of people have trouble finding golden syrup in the US and other places, but there doesn't seem to be a good substitute.

We have self raising flour here in the UK, which has baking powder already added - you can easily add it yourself.  I usually try to put plain flour and baking powder measurements as I have to do this in Switzerland anyway.

If you have any other questions or problems, do ask!