Kitchen Calculator makes it easy for cooks to convert units

App released 1st March 2010, developed by Forward Leap, LLC, £ 2.39

Translating different measurements of ingredients is a major problem for many cooks – especially if, like me, you exchange recipes with friends in other countries! My Canadian friend sends me lots of great recipes but the measurements mean little to me as a Brit, which can result in some rather odd meals.

Although the Kitchen Calculator PRO is not cheap as iPhone apps go, for me it was definitely worth the money, saving time and a lot of stress in the kitchen. You can use the Calculator to convert measurements of volume, weight, temperature and distance – the first three being the important ones for chefs, naturally!

It’s very easy to use for conversions – just select the unit to convert, for instance “volume” if you want to convert a cup of flour to something that means more to you. Then you have the ability to not only convert this amount to, for instance, tablespoons, but more importantly, to a weight, such as grams. This is important because many American recipes use volume measurements for things like flour or sugar, while in Britain we typically use weight measurements.

The app has a big list of ingredients this works beautifully for, and cleverly knows that a cup of flour weighs a lot less than a cup of sugar, for instance – one of the tricky things about converting recipes from volume to weight.

The Kitchen Calculator PRO is one of those apps that make me wonder – could my iPhone actually solve ALL of my day-to-day problems? Maybe, just maybe, it can…!