The amount of dry tablespoons that are in a cup are 16 tablespoons.
There are 16 dry tablespoons in a cup.
The same goes for even liquid ingredients as 1 cup has 16 tablespoons of ingredients.
If you have no measuring cups and need to measure one cup of dry or liquid ingredients for a recipe then you can use a tablespoon to measure the ingredients.
Scoop 16 of those tablespoons of the ingredients whether dry ingredients or liquid ingredients and use a regular cup.
Once you've scooped 16 of those tablespoons of the ingredients into the cup then you have 1 cup of ingredients.