Milk Converter

Dairy substitution conversions for cooking and baking.

To substitute 1 cup whole milk:

• Skim milk: 1 cup + 1 tbsp melted butter
• Half-and-half: 1/2 cup + 1/2 cup water
• Heavy cream: 1/3 cup + 2/3 cup water
• Evaporated milk: 1/2 cup + 1/2 cup water

To substitute 1 cup heavy cream:

• Half-and-half: 1 cup (will be thinner, add 1 tbsp butter for richness)
• Whole milk: 3/4 cup + 1/4 cup melted butter
• Evaporated milk: 1 cup (similar consistency)

Fat content:

• Skim milk: 0% fat
• Low-fat milk: 1-2% fat
• Whole milk: 3.25% fat
• Half-and-half: 10-12% fat
• Light cream: 18-20% fat
• Heavy cream: 36-40% fat

Weight per cup:

• Whole milk: 244 g = 8.6 oz
• Heavy cream: 238 g = 8.4 oz

The thing most substitution charts skip is why the butter is there. Milk is mostly water with a bit of fat, and that fat does real work in a recipe: it tenderizes the crumb, carries flavor, and helps browning. So when you stand in for whole milk with skim, adding a spoon of melted butter puts back the fat you lost, and the cake comes out close to the original instead of dry and pale.

One swap to watch: evaporated milk and sweetened condensed milk are not the same thing, and they are not interchangeable. Evaporated is just milk with about 60% of the water removed, so diluting it half-and-half with water gets you back to roughly normal milk. Condensed milk has a large amount of sugar added, so dropping it into a savory recipe will wreck it. Plant milks (oat, soy, almond) can usually fill in cup for cup, but they lack dairy fat and protein, so richness and browning suffer a little.