Simple sums for a professional chefs one.

Working out a recipe to make what you want

Most of the time in my job I take what is a domestic recipe and turn it in to a commercial recipe that can be produced from as little a 1kg to 1000kg . Now we have computores and spread sheets to work all that out but if you do not and for the first time you are faced with this then this is what to do

To calculate how much ingredients you need if you are increasing a recipe is not as easy as it sounds. For a way of sorting this out all you have to do is follow a simple sum and you will get the right amount very time. You divide the amount of the recipe by the number that you want it to make.

This recipe below makes 8 muffins according to the book and you want to make 50 muffins so you dived the 8 by 50.

8÷50=0.16

Now you take all the ingredients and divided them by 0.16 to get the amount that you need .

Makes 8 muffins.

Ingredients
2 eggs, beaten ÷0.16= 12.5, 12 and ½ eggs
85g caster sugar ÷0.16=531g caster sugar
240ml milk ÷0.16=1.5lt milk
100ml vegetable oil ÷0.16=625ml oil
300g plain flour ÷0.16=1.875kg flour
3 tsp baking powder ÷0.16=18.7 tsp backing powder
½ tsp salt ÷0.16=3.1 tsp salt
4 lemons, zest only ÷0.16=25 lemon zest only

For the frosting
50g icing sugar ÷0.16=312g icing sugar
1 lemon, juice only ÷0.16=6.25 6 and ¼ lemons juice only

Now this gives you the amount of ingredients that you want for the recipe that you want to make. Now with some things you need to think about if it is right or not, such as salt, but by and large if you have a recipe that you trust then this is a pretty fool proof way of working out what you need to make a bigger batch.