How to Calculate Recipe Calories

It’s easy to pull a box of cookies off the grocery store shelf and glance at the nutritional information to know how many calories you are eating. But when you’re making a recipe, sometimes it’s hard to know how many calories are going into your culinary creation. With some basic math, you can get a good estimate of calories for all of your home-cooked meals.

Write down the number of calories in each recipe ingredient. If some of your ingredients are in bulk form, calculate by the serving size listed on the package’s nutritional information. For example, one cup of flour has 455 calories. If you are using two cups, write down 910 calories. If some of your ingredients don’t have nutritional information, many websites have searchable calorie lists.

Add up the calories you wrote down. This will often be a large number, but don’t be put off by it.

Divide the total number by the number of servings. For example, if the calorie total is 3,000 and you made 24 cookies, 3,000 divided by 24 is 125. Each cookie has 125 calories.

Divide liquid-based foods, such as dips and puddings, evenly into individual serving cups. This will make it easier to calculate how many calories are in each serving.

It's easy to pull a box of cookies off the grocery store shelf and glance at the nutritional information to know how many calories you are eating. But when you're making a recipe