Could you please provide quantities in both the American and metric systems? When I encounter only grams and liters, my enthusiasm wanes.

Margaret Krainin
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One-Bowl Chocolate & Orange Sponge Cake
Recipe question for: One-Bowl Chocolate & Orange Sponge Cake

7 Comments

Stephanie B.
Stephanie B. February 8, 2020
My personal preference is for weights-either grams or ounces, though I'm used to metric weights since it's used so much in my work. I'm dissuaded when things only post in volumes for baking, though not usually enough to skip a recipe I'm really interested in. I second Gammy: a scale is a baking game changer, and will have a range of units to work with. Looking at this recipe, there's not that much to convert for the cake: butter (which will have grams on the wrapper anyway), sugar, flour. The ganache has a few conversions too, but does it really take more than a few minutes?
 
Margaret K.
Margaret K. February 9, 2020
Thanks for the suggestion to check the wrapper, or the box. It's a help, but still, getting up from my chair and going down to the freezer or looking up equivalents in Kitchen Companion is more than I want to do when deciding whether to print out a recipe. I have to weigh all my activities carefully in light of the total amount of energy available. Not everyone is young and spry. Even simple tasks can be quite difficult and time-consuming for someone with tremors, arthritis and stenosis, for example -- not to mention vanishing short-term memory. I could get all the way downstairs and have absolutely no recollection of why I went there!

It's still my opinion that if you want someone to do something (in this case, try out Food52 recipes and comment on the results), you make it as easy as possible for them and remove all the obvious obstacles. I actually think it's rude to publish recipes on an American website and not convert the quantities to American custom as a matter of policy.
 
Miss_Karen
Miss_Karen February 7, 2020
I too am dissuaded by metric. It's a bit of a hassle. However, if I DO decide to spend half a day figuring the conversions, I will write those out, and then ditch the frustrating metric version.
 
Margaret K.
Margaret K. February 6, 2020
Thank you for the lesson. Once I've decided to make a recipe, set up the ingredients, and begun to prepare the item, I do often use a scale. But when I just want to see if a recipe is worth my time to try, I need to ballpark the ingredients and determine whether I have them on hand. I'm not about to go to a conversion site and enter all the ingredients one at a time just to decide if a recipe looks workable. I'd rather just skip it. If Food52 wants members actually trying the recipes, it's a common courtesy to make it as easy as possible -- especially as I suspect the bulk of members are located in the United States, antiquated as it may be.
 
Gammy
Gammy February 6, 2020
Thanks, I understand where you are coming from now. But Food 52's recipes come from members around the world, who are passionate cooks and their recipes aren't necessarily reviewed by staff members before being posted on the site. Looking her up, this particular recipe submitter lives in the UK and if you are a fan of the "Great British Bake Off" or (the "Great British Baking Show" in the US) her name may be familiar. I am sure this recipe is wonderful and well worth doing the math.
 
Margaret K.
Margaret K. February 9, 2020
Thank you for taking the time to look up the author and to understand my point. If you're correct about recipes not getting reviewed by staff, that explains a lot -- I have to say I'm often bemused by oddities in the recipes. It's also a little frightening. If I were running Food52, I wouldn't publish any recipe I hadn't at least reviewed for accuracy, method and completeness.
PS I'm a Brit, but I can't stand the British baking shows and never watch them, so the name was not familiar to me.
 
Gammy
Gammy February 6, 2020
I am sorry your enthusiasm wanes when reading through an interesting recipe, but most countries DO use the metric system rather than the antiquated pounds and cups method. In reality, measuring by weight is much more accurate, especially in baking, for repeatable results. Here is a great conversion website: https://www.thecalculatorsite.com . Or you could get an inexpensive kitchen scale, most will show weight in both pounds and grams. Once you get used to a scale, you can pretty much leave your measuring cups in the drawer. A scale truly changed my baking for the better.
 
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