Neocolours Recipe Exchange?

[Wingsrising]

I don't know why US recipes would call for more flour than UK ones, but I doubt it's because flour comes in larger bags. Adding more flour would change the consistancy of the baked good, after all.

What may be true is that UK recipes have more fat in them than US ones, which would decrease the ratio of flour to fat... we have a thing about fat in the US.

For what it's worth, the Cook's Illustrated yellow cake recipe has the same ratio of butter to flour as the recipe given above, although it has a more sugar, as well as milk and vanilla. (I'm not sure that what EoS is describing is QUITE yellow cake, which would have vanilla and generally milk in it, and so presumably would be a little moister.) Cooks Illustrated does NOT have a thing about fat.

Cinnamon rolls are typically made with something closer to bread dough, which is always going to have a lot more flour than a yellow cake.

[Jazzy]

The whole thing's scaled up drastically, is what I meant; I've not seen a cookbook recipe here which would serve 20, ever, because the ingredients wouldn't be found in those quantities. Things like cheesecakes, as well; American recipes weigh about three times as much as English ones. Typically, American sites default to "serves 8" (see allrecipes.com, for example) and English ones serve fewer.

So, the point I was actually trying to make in my first post and forgot to: please say how many the recipe serves, realistically, since I've found that recipes (and especially from different countries) assume vastly different serving sizes and portions. England seems to serve 4 by default, Germany 6 and America 8, but that's just what I've found, and individual recipes vary dramatically.

It might be white cake rather than yellow cake, anyway.

[Wingsrising]

I haven't seen a cookbook recipe that would serve 20, either, if that makes you feel any better. I mean, cookie recipes, I guess -- they generally make 2 dozen cookies which would serve 20 if you gave everyone a cookie.

I think serving 8 may be a recipe website thing. In my experience recipes from cookbooks, magazines, flyers from Whole Foods, etc. usually serve 4 to 6. Soup recipes I think are more likely to serve 8, since soup usually reheats well so it's assumed you'll be eating it for two meals.

But yes, I agree -- serving sizes are essential. Preferably your realistic assessment of how much the recipe ACTUALLY serves as opposed to how much it says it serves.

[Joey]

Mmm... so can we request recipes as well? I don't cook much so I don't have any I could share (Unless you want my recipe for apple and tuna sandwiches...) but requesting would be cool I think.

[Jessi]

Joey, I think requesting recipes will be fun too :D when I start the actual thread to submit them, I think it should be cool for people to request a recipe, and I'll keep a list of it. If people have a recipe that fits it, they can let the board know and submit it :3

[EofS]

I just stumbled across this page which might be very handy for conversions between common ingredients (sugar, flour, dairy products) in terms of how to translate between US and UK forms of the same. Ie, it tells you how you can make US cake flour using UK self-raising (if you really feel you need to) and why you should always check which cornflour a recipe wants. (Short answer - they're completely different ;0)