HOW MUCH IS A STICK OF BUTTER??

If you are like me and surf the net far and wide for great recipes, you will come across American terms that may puzzle you. I love Martha Stewart, FoodBuzz, Joyofbaking and many other sites as well as everyday people's blogs. I always see "1 Stick of butter" and I always wonder, what the heck is a stick of butter? Here in Australia, we don't call our blocks of butter sticks. Generally the butter we use for cooking comes in a block of 250g or 500g. There are some brands like, Western Star, that sell butter in 50g portions but not individually, you will still need to purchase 200g at a time. So as math tells us, that is 4 lots of 50g portions. Would you be purchasing these portions at a cheaper price because you get less? It would be nice wouldn't, but as per usual convenience overrides price and you will pay more for the convient 50g portions. I always opt for the 250g block.

Anyway, I digress. The reason for this post is to let you know I have searched for the answer and found that a stick of butter is 113g. In the past I have whacked the full 250g block into recipes thinking this would be fine, but my disasters have proven otherwise.  I have also seen cooking shows that use the sticks and I realised quickly that it ain't the same as our blocks.

So, nex time you see a recipe that calls for 1 stick of butter, you know it calls for 113grams of butter!