Kids love to help in the kitchen. And, if your kids love to bake or help during mealtime, then proper kitchen skills are essential. Something like measuring wet or dry ingredients can be learned early on. Whether you use measuring cups or a kitchen scale, measuring ingredients the right way is a great learning experience.
Wet vs. Dry Measure
There are certain measuring cups that you use for measuring wet or dry ingredients. Wet or liquid measuring cups have a pour spout and are used for all “wet” items, like water, milk or oil. For ingredients that are “dry” items, like flour or sugar, use dry measuring cups. Seems simple, but we can all admit that we all want less dishes to wash and might be tempted to let the kids use whatever measuring cups we have out to measure all ingredients. But we shouldn’t, as using the wrong cups will yield the wrong amount of whatever you’re measuring and may throw off your recipe.
The Right Way to Measure Flour
Raise your hands if you’re guilty of this…placing your measuring cup into the bag of flour and scooping or packing that flour into the cup. While your recipe may say “one cup of flour,” measuring flour this way actually gives you more than one cup. So don’t let the kids do this. Teach them the right way, even if you get flour on your table or countertop. They will be more successful with what they bake.
All dry ingredients need to be measured in a way where they can be leveled off with a straight-edged tool, like a butter knife. Do this when measuring dry ingredients, including ingredients you would use measuring spoons for.
Let’s measure flour in our example. Using your dry measuring cup, lightly spoon in the flour until the cup is full – be careful not to pack in the flour. Then use the flat edge of your straight-edged spatula or butter knife and level it off by scraping the excess back into your container. Do the same with measuring spoons.
Measuring Liquids
Liquid measuring cups have the measurements written on the side of cup so that you can pour in the correct amount of water, milk or any liquid until into the cup until it reaches the right amount you need. Be sure to keep the measuring cup on a flat surface – don’t hold it while pouring – and pour until you see it reach the right amount by looking at the cup at eye level. Use measuring spoons for smaller amounts of liquid, like extracts.
Measuring Other Wet or Dry Ingredients
So you know what cups to use to measure liquid and dry ingredients. But what about those “other” ingredients like honey, molasses, corn syrup or sour cream? What set of measuring cups work best?
For ingredients like sour cream or yogurt, use a dry measuring cup. Scoop the ingredient into the cup and scrape or level off the excess like you would with flour. You can use a dry measuring cup for your nut butters too – just spray the cup with cooking spray for easy removal of sticky ingredients.
Use a liquid measuring cup for those “wet” sticky ingredients, like honey, molasses or corn syrup. Just spray the measuring cup with cooking spray and the sticky stuff will slide right out, making it so much easier to measure.
What About Butter?
How do you measure butter? No need to use a cup at all – just follow the measurements listed on the wrapper and cut straight down with a knife to get the right amount. Easy peasy.
Now that the kids can measure out ingredients right, how about they make their own snacks? Try these Three Easy Kid-Approved Snacks that they can make on their own. Or, tell me what snack they’re making up – I’d love to hear about it!
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