Hi~^^

For baking, I always use a kitchen scale to measure the weights.... especially for flour and all other kind of powder ingredients... believe it or not, I once scaled the weight of one cup of flour for 3 times (scooped a cup of flour and scaled, then put it back, and scooped another cup and scaled again...), but the difference between the heaviest and the lightest is 30g!!!
If making an 8" cake, the variance of 30g will definitely make a BIG difference~

So, I always encourge baking newbies to get a reliable kitchen scale first. If you have one, just follow the recipes, and I'm almost positive that you will get the same result as I did~^^