This is how my family got into the habit of quadrupling the recipe we use for snickerdoodles. The first time we tried to double it, both my mom and I managed to forget how much butter was in a stick, and we ended up with double of everything else but four times the butter. Fortunately, the dough needs to be shaped by hand, and we realized before rolling anything in cinnamon that the texture was way off. Sixteen dozen cookies later, we regretted nothing. I, too, use the "count the blobs" method of tracking ingredient addition. When it's flour or sugar I'm measuring, I count the cups out loud and don't care who hears me. When I'm cooking without a recipe, I group the "add to taste" ingredients on one side of the bowl and move them to the other after adding them. And when I'm making up my own recipe to remember and refine, I have a dedicated pad of paper and write down each ingredient as I add it. For bread, I use hash marks to count cups of flour added to the sponge. Works pretty well so far!

• Reply