Blackberries Measurements and Conversions

Measure blackberries whole, loose and dry. Tip them into a dry measuring cup until they reach the rim, give the cup a gentle shake so they settle, and top it up if a gap opens. Never press them down: blackberries are soft, and crushed berries leak juice and fill the cup differently.

Rinse the berries just before you use them, then drain and pat them dry. Water clinging to the fruit adds weight and makes batters and fillings wetter.

Every cup of berries includes air gaps, so a loosely filled cup weighs a little less than a well-settled one. Large cultivated berries also mean fewer berries per cup, so treat the average berry in the by-the-piece table below as a guide, not a promise.

For jam, where the ratio of fruit to sugar matters, weigh the berries instead. Measure frozen blackberries while they are still frozen, because thawed ones slump, release juice and stop filling a cup the same way.

A box that lists a net weight converts to cups with USDA's figure for whole raw berries:

• 6 oz is about 1.2 cups.
• 12 oz is about 2.4 cups.
• 18 oz is about 3.5 cups.

In the UK the same box is called a punnet, and a 150 g punnet holds about 1 US cup of berries.

On this site, a pint is the US liquid pint of 2 cups. NIST Handbook 44 also lists a separate US dry pint, about 16 percent larger, so fruit sold by the dry pint fills a little more than two cups.