How Many Grams in a Cup of Cake Flour?

Cups to grams: cake flour

Grams to cups: cake flour

Working with more than one ingredient? The grams in a cup chart puts 40 ingredients in one table, and the Whole Recipe Converter converts a full ingredient list in a single paste.

How to measure cake flour properly

It compacts if you look at it. Cake flour's fine particles settle into a dense mass, so never scoop it: fluff it in the container, spoon it gently into the cup and level off without tapping or shaking. A packed cup can overshoot 113 grams by enough to toughen the crumb it was chosen to keep tender.

Sift — but notice when. Cake flour clumps in storage, and many recipes call for sifting. “1 cup sifted cake flour” means sift before measuring; “1 cup cake flour, sifted” means measure 113 grams first. When in doubt, weigh: the gram figure is the same either way.

Make your own in a pinch. For each cup, take a spooned cup of all-purpose flour (120 grams), remove 2 tablespoons, and whisk in 2 tablespoons of cornstarch — roughly 105 grams of flour plus 14 grams of cornstarch. Sift the mixture twice and it behaves convincingly like cake flour.

Why does a cup of cake flour weigh less than a cup of all-purpose flour?

Cake flour is milled from soft wheat to a very fine, silky powder, and a level spooned cup of it weighs 113 g rather than the 120 g of all-purpose flour. Its fineness cuts both ways when measuring: it spoons in lightly, but it also clumps and settles in the box, so a cup scooped from a compacted layer comes out heavier than intended. Fluffing the flour in its container and spooning gently, without tamping it down, gives the most consistent cup.

Products sold as cake flour also vary. Some are straight soft-wheat flour, while home bakers often imitate it with all-purpose flour plus cornstarch, and that mixture does not weigh or behave exactly like the boxed product. The delicacy it provides matters most where the crumb is the whole point — chiffon cake, angel food cake and tender white layer cakes — because a few extra grams of flour toughen a batter that depends on minimal gluten and maximum lightness.

The most common mistake is measuring cake flour straight from a settled, clumped box, usually by scooping. The fine powder compresses readily, the cup overshoots 113 g, and a cake that should be feather-light bakes up dense. Sifting or thoroughly fluffing first, then spooning and leveling — or simply weighing — keeps the amount honest.

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