Use Cups, Teaspoons and Other Measurements
When you create an ingredient in Recipe Cost Calculator, you create it using a specific type of unit. This is usually either a weight (lb, kg, gram, oz) or a volume (litre, quart, pint, etc.).
It is not possible to automatically convert weight to volumes. If you purchase an ingredient by weight, for example a 20lb bag of sugar (weight), but you want to use this ingredient in cups (volume), you need to create a Measurement Converter.
Recipe Cost Calculator comes with built in measurement converters for over 1000 common ingredients. Our measurement converters are easy to create and we have a 3 minute video to teach you how to do that here:
Don't like videos? Keep reading!
If you create an ingredient like flour, and specify that you purchase a 25lb bag (a weight measurement), your ingredient creation will look something like this:
But if you want to be able to use your flour as cups (a volume measurement), you will need to create a measurement converter.
If you scroll down the ingredient creation page you will see a section that you can expand called Measurement Converters. Once you expand it, it will look something like this. You can search our default ingredient list for known converters (we do this the first time automatically using the name of the ingredient you are creating or editing).
A list of matching ingredients will appear (if we have any), and if the "Has Converters" label appears, then we have some matching measurement converters you can create. Click on the ingredient in the list, and the known converters will appear to the right, similar to the screenshot below.
If none of the measurement converters that are presented make sense, or if there were no automatic measurement converters available, you can click "New Measurement Converter" (that's the button in the screenshot above) to create your own.
After clicking "New Measurement Converter" - in this case what we want to do is tell Recipe Cost Calculator that some weight amount of flour is equal to some volume amount of flour. In the below example we've said that 125 grams is equal to 1 cup.
Remember that the only thing a measurement converter is doing is "teaching" Recipe Cost Calculator that one set of units is equal to another set of units. Once you've set up the measurement converter like we have in the example above, you can use any weight or any volume of flour in your recipes.
If you can't find a converter in our internal database that works, you can either weight the ingredient yourself, or you can use one of the many online tools that can help you with weight to volume conversions. Wolfram Alpha is one of our favourites.
If you need further help, please watch the three minute measurement converter video above (if you haven't already). If that doesn't help - please send us a note!