Measure Accurately

When people ask me why their cake or pastry didn’t turn out, I retrace all their steps and invariably discover they have measured inaccurately. If you want perfect results, you have to be meticulous about measuring. Although this point may seem obvious, many otherwise knowledgeable cooks do not know how to measure correctly. Often they do not realize, for instance, that there are two different types of measuring cups: one for liquid and one for dry ingredients. These two kinds of cups are not interchangeable. Many mistakes in baking result from the simple mistake of measuring dry ingredients in a Pyrex measuring cup (See for the correct use of measuring cups.)