Ratios

You will find that I mention ratios often when I talk about converting recipes. Cooking with ratios, low carb or otherwise is a terrific way to learn recipes. I bought a book a few years ago that I just can not live without. Ratio by Michael Ruhlman is an awesome baker/cook's companion. Because I understand ratios I believe I have more success in creating new recipes and converting regular carb recipes to low carb. I also weigh anything that I can weigh now. The measuring cup, you will find if you study ratios at all, is so arbitrary. It made me understand why sometimes the same recipe just didn't turn out quite right with no explanation.

While many things from 1 cup of to 1 cup of may have the same mass, many things are very different and if you tried to replace one for the other it can totally change a recipe and make it seem impossible. If you haven't already invested in some sort of kitchen scale, like I've said before, you should. If you have never learned about ratios in cooking, please do. I am sure there are many books or websites that have plenty of wonderful information but I can attest for Mr. Ruhlman's book and any ratio recipe I have tried from his book.


Below I have listed some examples of why you can't measure cup for cup if you want to convert a recipe or even if you are just baking. First I list the ingredient being measured as one cup, the average of two of my measures, then what the labels list as the right weight for the measurement. It will be easier to see why a recipe turned out so dry or too soggy, super sweet, browned too early, didn't set, etc.

Ingredient	My estimates for weight of one cup	Standard weights for one cup
flour	158g	140g
Carbalose	115g	100g
coconut flour	116g	112g
almond meal	126g	112g
sugar	218g	200g
erythritol	206g	192g
Splenda	30g	24g
coconut sugar	167g	240g
corn syrup	329g	240g
butter	226g	226g
oil	216g	224g
shortening	189g	192g

So, if you were basing your recipe on ratios and say you were going to make a simple 1-2-3 cookie with 1 part sugar, 2 parts fats, 3 parts flour; if you chose to make it by measurement, one, depending on how pact your flour is, it would contain 1 cup of sugar, 2 cups of butter and 3 cups of flour. Now, translating these measurements into weight: 1 cup of sugar could be 200 to 218g, 2 cups of butter 452g, and 3 cups of flour 420 to 474g. To make it easy, we will say that the fat(butter) is the constant 2 in the ratio. This makes the ratio for you cookies anywhere from 0.88 - 2.0 - 1.85 or 0.96 - 2 - 2.09, neither or none of which would allow your cookies to turn out the way they are intended.


For the sake of validity, I decided to make these approximately 1 - 2 - 2 cookies expecting that they would spread and be crumbly. My hypothesis was correct. Although they smelled delicious baking, of the dozen cookies I made, none were able to be picked up before falling apart, the edges were all crispy brown while the centers were greasy and slightly gooey. Don't worry. No low carb ingredients were wasted on this experiment :) And, for the sake of experiment, these cookies were quite bland and left a fatty coating in my mouth from one little bite. Although the flour was seriously deficit it seemed to be an overpowering flavor.

One more word about ratios; if you know the ratio for any recipe then you can make it to what ever size suits your needs. Baking for two? Use 50g sugar to 100g butter to 150g of flour to make a small batch.  Cooking for 25? No problem. Adjust your recipe to 400g sugar to 800g butter to 1200g flour. If you have the ratio you can cook for any occasion.


Bon Appetit!