weigh

A cup of flour weighs anywhere from about 120 g to 150 g, depending on how it got into the cup. That is a 25 percent swing in the most important ingredient in a cake.

A digital scale removes the guessing and most of the dishes. Put the bowl on the scale, press tare to zero it, and add flour to the number. Press tare again and add the sugar. One bowl, no measuring cups.

$ weigh --tare bowl0 g$ add flour --scoop-from-bag$ weigh bowl152 g   # recipe expected 125 g$ man cake | grep densecake is dense when it has too much flour. see weigh(1).