You’re standing in the kitchen. Flour is everywhere. The recipe calls for exactly one stick of butter, but your scale is set to metric and you’re staring at a cold, hard block of Kerrygold that doesn’t have those convenient little tablespoon markings on the wrapper. You need to know the deal with 8 tablespoons butter in grams right now before your oven preheats to 350°F and stays there wasting electricity.
Basically, 113 grams.
That’s the "official" answer. If you look at a standard wrapper of Land O'Lakes or even the generic store brand from Kroger, it tells you that one stick equals 8 tablespoons, which equals 1/2 cup, which equals 4 ounces, which equals 113.398 grams. But honestly? Nobody is measuring out .398 grams of butter unless they’re working in a high-end pastry lab in Paris. Most home bakers just round it down to 113 grams and call it a day. It works.
The math behind 8 tablespoons butter in grams
Let's break this down because the math is actually kinda weird when you get into the weeds of US Customary units versus the metric system used by literally everyone else. One tablespoon of butter is roughly 14.18 grams. If you multiply that by eight, you land at that 113.44 range.
Precision matters.
In the United States, we’re obsessed with volume. We use cups and spoons. The problem is that butter isn't a liquid, even though we treat it like one in recipes. When you press butter into a tablespoon, you might leave an air bubble. Or maybe you've got "cold" butter that doesn't pack down right. This is why professional bakers like King Arthur Baking or Stella Parks (the genius behind BraveTart) almost always advocate for weight.
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Weight doesn't lie.
If you use a scale to measure your 8 tablespoons butter in grams, you are getting exactly 113 grams of fat, water, and milk solids. If you use a spoon, you might be getting 105 grams or 120 grams depending on how hard you squished it. That 15-gram difference? That is exactly why your cookies sometimes spread into oily puddles and other times stay like little hard rocks.
Why European butter changes the game
Don't assume all butter is created equal. It's not.
If you're buying Plugra or some fancy cultured butter from a local dairy, the fat content is higher. American butter is legally required to be at least 80% butterfat. European-style butter is usually 82% to 85%. While the weight of 8 tablespoons remains 113 grams, the composition of those grams is different.
More fat means less water.
When you use 113 grams of high-fat European butter in a recipe designed for standard American sticks, your pastry might turn out too "short" or crumbly because there isn't enough water to develop the gluten in the flour. It sounds like overthinking, but if you're making something delicate like a croissant or a flaky pie crust, those extra couple of grams of fat actually change the molecular structure of the dough.
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Temperature is the silent killer
You have your 113 grams. Great. But is it "room temperature"?
Most people think room temperature means soft enough to shove a finger through. Nope. Real room temperature for butter is about 65°F (18°C). At this temperature, the butter is still cool to the touch but will hold an indentation. If your 113 grams of butter is too warm—say, 75°F because it's been sitting near the stove—it won't cream properly with the sugar.
Creaming isn't just mixing.
It’s about the sugar crystals cutting tiny air pockets into the butter fat. If the butter is too soft, those air pockets collapse. No air means no lift. No lift means a dense, sad cake. So, even if you’ve nailed the 8 tablespoons butter in grams conversion perfectly, you can still ruin the bake by ignoring the thermometer.
Common kitchen mix-ups with butter volume
I’ve seen people try to measure 8 tablespoons by melting the butter first and pouring it into a measuring cup.
Stop doing that.
Melting butter changes its volume and its chemistry. When you melt butter, you’re breaking the emulsion of water and fat. If the recipe doesn't explicitly say "melted butter," stay away from the microwave. Use a knife. Cut the block.
- The Stick Method: In the US, one stick is 113g.
- The Half-Pound Method: A 227g block (like many imported butters) is exactly 16 tablespoons. Cut it in half.
- The "Eyeball" Method: Just don't. Get a $10 digital scale.
Seriously, a digital scale is the single best investment you can make for your kitchen. It's faster than washing measuring spoons and a thousand times more accurate. You put your bowl on the scale, hit "tare," and slice off chunks of butter until the screen hits 113. Done. No mess. No guessing.
What about salted vs. unsalted?
This is a hot debate. Most "serious" bakers insist on unsalted butter because it allows them to control the exact amount of salt in the dough. If you're using 113 grams of salted butter, you're adding roughly 1/4 teaspoon of salt to your recipe that you didn't account for.
Is it a big deal?
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For a batch of chocolate chip cookies, probably not. In fact, some people prefer the extra hit of salt. But for something like a delicate buttercream frosting, that salt can become overpowering. If you only have salted butter, just pull back on the added salt in the dry ingredients by about a quarter teaspoon per 8 tablespoons of butter.
Converting 8 tablespoons butter in grams for global recipes
If you’re looking at a British or Australian recipe, they might ask for "grams" or "ounces" right out of the gate.
113 grams is approximately 4 ounces.
If you see a recipe asking for 100g of butter, that is actually slightly less than 8 tablespoons. It’s about 7 tablespoons plus a teaspoon. This is where people get tripped up. They think "one stick is probably fine," toss in the 113 grams, and suddenly the ratio of fat to flour is off by 13%. In baking, a 13% error is huge.
Always convert back to the base unit the recipe creator used. If they wrote it in grams, use grams. If they wrote it in tablespoons, pray for their soul but use 14 grams per tablespoon as your guide.
The density factor
Butter density can vary slightly by brand, but for the sake of your sanity, we treat it as a constant. The density of butter is roughly 0.911 grams per milliliter. Since 8 tablespoons is about 118 milliliters, if you multiply 118 by 0.911, you get... drumroll... 107.5 grams.
Wait.
Why did I say 113 grams earlier? Because the US dairy industry has standardized the "stick" at 113.3 grams despite the theoretical volume math. This is the kind of stuff that drives people crazy. Stick to the 113 gram standard for American recipes; it's what the developers used when they were testing the cookies you're trying to bake.
Practical steps for perfect butter measurement
Forget the "soften in the microwave" hacks you see on TikTok. Most of them just end up with a melted core and cold edges. Instead, if you need that 113 grams of butter to be room temperature fast, try one of these:
- The Grater Trick: Take your cold 113g block and grate it with a cheese grater. The small shreds will reach room temperature in about 5 to 10 minutes.
- The Cubing Method: Cut the butter into small 1cm cubes. Increasing the surface area speeds up the warming process significantly.
- The Glass Dome: Pour boiling water into a ceramic bowl or glass, let it sit for a minute, dump the water out, and flip the warm bowl over your 113g of butter. The trapped heat will soften it gently without melting it.
When you're ready to bake, clear your counter. Put your scale down. Set it to grams. Slice your butter until it reads 113. Now you’ve got your 8 tablespoons butter in grams handled with the precision of a pro.
Move on to the flour next. Pro tip: Don't scoop the flour with the cup. Spoon it in or, better yet, weigh that too. 120 grams per cup. But that's a story for another day. For now, get that butter creamed, keep your ingredients at the right temp, and stop guessing. Your oven is waiting.