Stick it to me

I was just reading (and salivating) over at Mir’s blog about all the delicious food they enjoyed at their weekend barbeque/party/foodfest (insert more salivating). Someone mentioned Chess Bars which I’d never heard of before, but caught my attention because they’re made with cream cheese…and everyone knows that any recipe that includes cream cheese is sent directly from the heavens, so I thought I must try this new cream cheese delight. That will surely be good for my thigh area. But. Problem. Every recipe I found for Chess Bars calls for a “stick of butter.” See:

1 box yellow cake mix
1 stick melted butter
1 egg
Mix and press in 13 x 9 x 2 inch pan which has been sprayed with Pam.
Mix together:
8 oz. cream cheese
1 tsp. vanilla
2 eggs
1 box powdered sugar

Pour over dough; bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 35 minutes or until golden brown. (Will be gooey will not test done in the usual manner.) Serve room temperature or refrigerate.

Now see, I can convert those old school Imperial 8 ounces into Metric no problem (226.80 grams). I have a trusty online conversion calculator for just such an emergency. The problem is that there is no conversion for “stick”. Try as I might, I have found no metric equivalent for stick. I have tried all search strings including kilostick, stickometre, stickagram and stickolitre of butter. Here in the Great White North (eh?) we don’t buy our butter by the stick. We buy it by the block…450g to those of us under 40 and one pound to those of us who went to school in the days of platform shoes and bell bottoms (the first time they were cool, aka not for those few weeks in the nineties). So my question is, how many ounces in a stick?

Are there any friendly patriots out there willing to help me make Chess Bars – Canadian style?

(omg! I just reread that recipe and now they want a “box” of confectioners sugar! Is that a decibox or a millibox? Baking is haaaaaaard!)