You asked: How do I measure sticky ingredients?

Q: When a recipe calls for a sticky ingredient such as molasses or honey, is there any leeway in the measure for what sticks to the measuring cup? Should I add an extra teaspoon or so to compensate for what I can’t get out of the cup?

A: Here’s whether it matters if some of the sticky ingredient gets left behind and how to measure honey, corn syrup, molasses and more to get the full amount.

To answer the first part of the question, I conducted a rough experiment to see how much of a sticky ingredient you might typically be leaving behind in a measuring cup. I poured ½ cup of honey (170 grams) into a glass measuring cup, scraped it out with a rubber spatula and then weighed it again to see how much honey remained. After my first, admittedly lackadaisical attempt, there was 14 grams (2 teaspoons) of honey still clinging to the measuring cup. Spending a little more time and care, I was able to get that number down to 6 grams (a little less than 1 teaspoon). I stopped there, as going back in with my spatula a third time felt like overkill.

So, to answer the second part of the question, yes, you could add an extra teaspoon or so to compensate for what remains in the cup. That said, I don’t believe such a small amount would have much of an impact on the finished product, so you most likely don’t need to worry about it.

But for recipe measurement sticklers, there’s a better way!

As recipes editor Becky Krystal explained, the easiest solution is to “lightly grease your measuring cup with some cooking spray or a bit of oil and you won’t have to worry about any sticking at all!” Or, if the recipe already calls for oil, you can simply measure the oil first and then either pour it out and measure the sticky ingredient in the same measuring cup or do some quick math to add the agave, pomegranate molasses, maple syrup or whatever else to the oil already in the cup. But only do this if the math is easy for you, and if the two ingredients get added at the same time.

Another option is to skip the measuring cup altogether and use a scale. As one chat reader commented, if you are given (or willing to look up) the weight equivalencies for the volume measurements, you can add the sticky ingredient directly to its final destination without an intermediate stop.

Lastly, you may have seen videos on social media that suggest when adding small amounts of honey, molasses and the like to dry ingredients, simply make an indentation in the dry ingredients with your measuring spoon and then pour the sticky ingredient in. While there’s the issue of accuracy (which is negligible at this scale), the bigger problem with this “hack” is that I can’t think of any recipes that are written this way. In baking recipes, liquid sweeteners are typically either mixed with creamed butter and sugar or the other wet ingredients, such as eggs, milk or oil.