1. Scooping flour straight from the bag
This packs the flour and gives you far more than the recipe expects. Spoon the flour into the cup and level it, or weigh it. The measuring guide shows the method.
2. Using a liquid cup for dry ingredients, or the reverse
Dry cups fill to the rim, and liquid jugs have headroom above the line. Using the wrong one gives a different amount, so use the right tool for each.
3. Mixing up fluid ounces and ounces
A fluid ounce is a unit of volume, and an ounce is a unit of weight. They match closely only for water. A cup of flour is 8 fluid ounces of volume but only about 4 ounces of weight.
4. Ignoring which cup the recipe uses
A US cup holds 237 ml and a metric cup holds 250 ml. Recipes from Australia and New Zealand also use a 20 ml tablespoon. See the cup size guide if a recipe from another country comes out wrong.
5. Packing or not packing the wrong ingredient
Brown sugar is packed, while flour and powdered sugar are not. Pressing flour into the cup or leaving brown sugar loose both change the result.
6. Measuring sticky ingredients badly
Honey and syrup stay behind in the cup. Oil the cup first or weigh them in the bowl.
7. Forgetting about fan ovens
If a recipe was written for a conventional oven and yours has a fan, food can brown too fast. Lower the temperature by about 20 C, and check early. The oven converter shows both settings.
8. Converting by guesswork when changing pans or servings
Scaling every ingredient evenly keeps a recipe in proportion. Use the recipe scaler calculator for servings, and the pan size converter for a different tin, and then check the bake time.
The easiest fix of all
If you bake often, buy an inexpensive digital scale. It removes most of these mistakes at once and means fewer cups to wash.