Taylor Swift eat your heart out! The Irish Soda Bread Way has just joined the world of branded merchandising!
Taylor played 3 sold-out concerts in Dublin last week plus an extra day to sell her “Merch”.
One of our guests last week had travelled from the US to attend the 3 concerts. A true “Swiftie” she is. She was even wearing a beautiful Taylorswift Cardigan!
But what about our venture into merchandising….
We have just launched our “handy kitchen conversions” tea towel. We were inspired by guests asking us “what is that in American cups” when baking Irish soda bread with us.
Maybe we are all a bit baffled by the different measurement systems.
The metric system which uses meters, litres, and grams is now recognised as the International System of Measurement ( SI). It was adopted by 60 countries in 2018.
The Imperial system of units ( inches, ounces, feet, pounds, cups, teaspoons, gallons, miles and tons) was introduced in Britain in the 1800’s.
In the US a system of measurement developed from the English units and they are broadly similar.
However, the use of a blend of historic and modern measurement systems has led to much confusion amongst us bakers!
Some say that baking using cups for measuring is more intuitive, you “feel” what you are doing. However, not all cups are created equal! Cooking with cups is volume-based therefore the equivalent weight in grams will vary depending on the density of the ingredient. A cup of sugar weighs more than a cup of flour. But remember brown sugar weighs more than castor sugar! There are other variables too, such as how well the ingredient is packed into the cup, different types of flour, flour that may be old or dry, and humidity on the day.
Baking is a science and we need to be precise whether using cups, spoons, measuring jugs, scales. Double-check to avoid mistakes, especially when converting. Online conversion calculators are also readily available. However, remember, scales don’t lie!
The information on our humble tea towel does not cover all scenarios!! It is just a broad sweep of those conversions we hope may be relevant to bakers.
Happy baking one and all!
