Recipe Converter
Paste an ingredient list, choose a size, and get measurements you can actually pick up. Half of 3/4 cup is 6 tablespoons, not 0.375 cups.
It understands 1 1/2 cups, 3/4 cup, 2 tbsp, 1/4 tsp, 1 stick butter, 250 g, 1 ½ cups and 3 large eggs. Lines with no number, such as a heading or “salt to taste”, are passed through untouched.
What scaling cannot fix
Multiplying an ingredient list is arithmetic. Baking is not. Four things do not scale with the numbers, and they are the reason a halved cake can still come out wrong.
1 Eggs do not divide
A large US egg is about 50 g out of the shell: roughly 18 g of yolk and 32 g of white. To use half an egg, crack a whole one into a cup, beat it until the yolk and white are completely blended, then weigh out about 25 g or measure 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons. Do not try to pour half by eye, because unbeaten egg separates and you will get mostly white or mostly yolk, which behave very differently.
For a third of an egg use about 17 g, which is close enough to one yolk if the recipe leans rich, or a generous tablespoon of beaten egg. If you are doubling instead, egg sizes matter more than usual: six “large” eggs from a small carton can be 40 g short of six proper large eggs, which is a real difference in a cake.
2 The pan has to change too
Half the batter in the same pan bakes into a thin, dry, over browned layer. Batter depth drives everything about how a cake bakes, so when you change the batch size you have to change the pan to keep the depth roughly the same. Halving a 9x13 usually means moving to an 8 inch square or a 9 inch round. Doubling a single 9 inch round means two pans, not one deeper one.
Work out which pan actually matches your new batch with the cake pan converter, which compares the batter volume of both pans and tells you how full each one would be.
3 Bake time moves with depth, not with volume
A half batch is not baked in half the time. If you keep the batter at the same depth in a smaller pan, the time barely changes at all. If the batter ends up shallower, it bakes faster and dries out quickly once it is done. If it ends up deeper, it needs longer and usually an oven about 25 °F cooler so the outside does not set before the middle catches up.
Put the two pans into the baking time adjuster to get a revised time window, then start checking early and trust the skewer rather than the clock.
4 Some ingredients do not want to be tripled
Leaveners, salt and strong spices scale reasonably well up to double, then start to misbehave. A tripled cake often tastes soapy or metallic because the baking soda and powder went up in a straight line while the batter mass, and therefore the amount of acid available to react with them, did not behave quite so tidily. Yeast is the extreme case: a doubled dough does not need double the yeast, it just needs the same rise time in a bigger bowl.
The safe move for anything larger than double is to make the recipe twice rather than once at 3x. Mixing time and pan geometry both stop cooperating well before the arithmetic does.
How this converter does the math
Every volume measurement is first turned into teaspoons, because teaspoons divide cleanly into everything else in the US kitchen system:
| Measure | Teaspoons | Also equals |
|---|---|---|
| 1 cup | 48 tsp | 16 tablespoons |
| 3/4 cup | 36 tsp | 12 tablespoons |
| 2/3 cup | 32 tsp | 10 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons |
| 1/2 cup | 24 tsp | 8 tablespoons, 1 stick of butter |
| 1/3 cup | 16 tsp | 5 tablespoons + 1 teaspoon |
| 1/4 cup | 12 tsp | 4 tablespoons, 2 fluid ounces |
| 1 tablespoon | 3 tsp | 1/16 cup |
The scaled figure is then rebuilt out of measures that exist in a real drawer: whole cups, the five standard cup fractions, whole tablespoons, and teaspoons down to an eighth. Where several forms are possible the converter picks the one with the fewest separate measurements, which is why half of 3/4 cup comes back as 6 tablespoons rather than 1/3 cup plus 2 teaspoons, even though both are correct.
When the exact answer falls between two measurable amounts the result is marked about and the true decimal is shown underneath, so you can decide for yourself whether the difference matters. It usually does not for a spice. It can for a leavener.
Halving and thirding chart
The measurements people look up most, already worked out. This is the one to screenshot before you start.
| Recipe says | Half | Third | Double | Triple |
|---|
An asterisk means the exact answer falls between two measurable amounts and has been rounded to the nearest one you can actually measure.
More baking tools
All free, all built for actual kitchen use.
Questions bakers actually ask
What is half of 3/4 cup?
6 tablespoons. Three quarters of a cup is 12 tablespoons, so half of it is 6. You could also write it as 3/8 cup, but nobody owns a 3/8 cup measure, which is exactly the problem with converters that answer in decimals.
If you would rather stay in cup measures, 6 tablespoons is the same as 1/4 cup plus 2 tablespoons. Both are correct. The tablespoon version is one measurement instead of two, so that is what this converter shows first.
What is half of 1/3 cup?
2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons. A third of a cup is 16 teaspoons, half of that is 8 teaspoons, and 8 teaspoons is 2 tablespoons with 2 teaspoons left over. In cups it is 1/6, which is not a measure that exists in any set.
The same answer works for a third of 1/2 cup, because 1/6 of a cup is 1/6 of a cup however you arrive at it. That is a genuinely useful thing to remember when you are halving one recipe and thirding another.
How do I use half an egg?
Crack a whole large egg into a small bowl or cup and beat it thoroughly with a fork until the yolk and the white are completely combined and no streaks remain. Then weigh out 25 g, or measure 1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons of the beaten egg. A whole large US egg is about 50 g without the shell.
Save the rest for scrambled eggs or brush it on the top of something as an egg wash. What you must not do is pour half of an unbeaten egg, because the white pours first and you will end up with a batter that is almost all white and no yolk.
Can I just double everything to double a recipe?
For most cakes, cookies and quick breads, yes, at 2x. The parts that need attention are not the ingredients but the equipment and the timing: you need pans that hold twice the batter, an oven that can heat them evenly, and a mixing bowl with room to actually mix.
Watch the leaveners and salt above 2x. They rise in a straight line while the flavor does not, so a tripled batch often tastes noticeably saltier or slightly soapy from the baking soda. For anything beyond double, make the recipe twice instead. It costs a few more minutes and removes every one of these problems at once.
Do I halve the baking time when I halve the recipe?
No. Baking time follows how deep the batter sits, not how much of it there is. Half a batch spread in a pan half the area bakes in roughly the original time. Half a batch left in the original pan is half as deep, and will be done a good deal sooner, often 20 to 30 percent sooner.
The safe method is to move to a smaller pan so the depth stays similar, then start checking about ten minutes before the recipe's stated time. Our baking time adjuster will work out the new window from the two pan sizes.
What about ingredients given in grams?
Those are the easy ones. Weight scales perfectly linearly with no fractions to snap to, which is one more argument for weighing rather than measuring. This converter multiplies gram, kilogram, ounce and pound figures directly and rounds to a weight your scale can actually show.
If your recipe is in cups and you would rather work in grams, run each line through the grams to cups converter first. It uses a separate density for every ingredient, because a cup of flour and a cup of honey are not remotely the same weight.
Why does the converter sometimes say “about”?
Because the honest answer is not always a measurement you can make. A third of 2/3 cup is 2/9 of a cup, which is 10 and two thirds teaspoons. The nearest thing you can actually measure is 3 tablespoons plus 1 3/4 teaspoons, so that is what you get, flagged as approximate with the true figure shown underneath.
The gap is almost always under 2 percent, which is invisible in a spice or an extract. Where it would matter, in baking soda or baking powder or yeast, the flag tells you to think about it rather than quietly rounding on your behalf.
How do I scale a recipe to a different number of servings?
Use the two boxes under the size buttons: type what the recipe currently serves, type what you need, and the converter works out the multiplier. Eight servings down to six is a factor of 0.75, so every measurement is multiplied by three quarters.
Bear in mind that a “serving” is not a fixed thing, especially for cake. A 9 inch round is 12 party servings or about 30 wedding servings depending purely on how it is cut, which is a factor of two and a half for the identical cake. Our cake serving chart explains which number you should be scaling toward.
Conversions use US customary measures: 1 cup = 16 tablespoons = 48 teaspoons. Last reviewed August 2026.