My Mum says that you must write tblsp for tablespoon and tsp for teaspoon. I find this really confusing, because to my mind, they look almost exactly the same. So instead, I put an upper case T for tablespoon, and a lowercase t for teaspoon and that way I never get confused. So if you've read any of these recipes and become confused, sorry about that, but now you know!
Also, I am aware that cups in New Zealand are a different size to cups in America (or wherever uses American cups). Here a cup holds 250mls of water. I've only just got a set of scales that (may or may not) work with any kind of accuracy, so usually I use the conversion tables at the beginning of the Edmonds' Cookbook to convert from grams into cups or spoons.
When it comes to baking in general (not bread baking which is quite different) measurements are only a guide. I try to stick to them as closely as possible, especially the first time I make something, but sometimes you just need to go with the flow. An example of this is the treacle scones I made for breakfast. The recipe I had written down (which may have been poorly transcribed, but originated in Ladies, A Plate, a book I will probably talk about soon) asked for 225g flour, 50g butter, and 150g of milk (with treacle and spices as well), and the mixture ended up looking like a cake batter. I panicked a little, but started adding handfuls (and I literally mean handfuls, not spoonfuls) to try to get the familiar texture of scones, and now have no idea how much flour I should use. This has also happened when trying out recipes from the internet that are American or English, and having to add more flour because the mixture is too wet (perhaps because they use American cups?). So just use your judgment!
