Rainbow sprinkles (jimmies)

One US cup of rainbow sprinkles (jimmies) weighs 192 grams (6.8 ounces). Going the other way, 100 grams is about 0.52 cups.

Baking chips compared: cup weights side by side, the source behind each, and why they differ.

A teaspoon of rainbow sprinkles (jimmies) weighs about 4 g, and a cup about 192 g (6.8 oz). Wilton's and Fancy Sprinkles' labels both weigh a teaspoon at 4 g; two store-brand labels that say 6 g describe a spoon fuller than rods can pack.

Jimmies are the short, rod-shaped sprinkles, about a millimetre thick and a few millimetres long, made from sugar, corn starch, vegetable oil and colouring, with a shiny confectioner's glaze. Rainbow jimmies and chocolate jimmies are the classic topping for ice cream, cupcakes, frosted cookies and doughnuts, and they are folded into funfetti cakes and cookies. Nonpareils, the tiny round balls, and sanding sugar are different decorations and are not covered here.

Sprinkles are one of the few foods whose label weighs a spoonful. The FDA's reference amount for baking decorations is a teaspoon, so the grams on the label are what a teaspoon holds. Wilton's 10.5 oz jar of rainbow jimmies gives a teaspoon as 4 g with 74 servings, which matches its net weight. Fancy Sprinkles' crunchy rainbow sprinkles give 4 g too, and so does Kroger's Simple Truth shaker, whose shape is not stated. This site publishes 4 g, 192 g a cup. Confidence is medium: every source is a label rounded to a whole gram, so a true teaspoon could weigh anywhere from 3.5 to 4.5 g.

Two labels say 6 g a teaspoon: Great Value's rainbow sprinkles and Signature Select's chocolate sprinkles, whose 50 servings do add up to its 298 g. They are listed without figures because 6 g is physically too heavy for the shape, as the check below explains.

King Arthur Baking's chart has no sprinkles row.

The physical check: sprinkles are almost solid sugar and fat, about 1.45 g per millilitre, but rods do not pack well. Short rods poured into a spoon cross and prop each other up, and they fill only about half to 60% of the space, which puts a teaspoon at 3.5 to 4.2 g. The 4 g labels sit there. A 6 g teaspoon would need the rods to fill about 85% of the spoon, which is more than even perfectly round balls can manage loosely; it reads as a serving weight that was not measured by the spoon.

Practical guidance: use 4 g per teaspoon of jimmies, 12 g per tablespoon and about 190 g per cup. For a funfetti cake or cookies that call for half a cup of sprinkles, about 95 g, weigh them if you can: sprinkles settle when the jar is shaken, and a heaped cup weighs more than a level one. Fold them in at the end and briefly, since the colours bleed into a wet batter.