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How would you go about solving this?

Sami is developing his own recipe for a lemon drizzle cake and is experimenting with the amount of caster sugar to use.
His first attempt needed more caster sugar, so he increased the amount used by 35% for his second attempt.
This needed less caster sugar, so he decreased the amount used in his second attempt by 14% for his third attempt.
His third attempt used 255.42 g of caster sugar.
Work out how much caster sugar, in grams (g), his first attempt used.

Following his first attempt, Sami decided to increase the amount of caster sugar by 35% for his second attempt. Therefore, to calculate the amount of caster sugar Sami used in his second attempt, we need to add 35% of x to the original amount x:

[tex]\textsf{Amount used in 2nd attempt}=x + 35\%\;\textsf{of}\;x\\\\\textsf{Amount used in 2nd attempt}=x+0.35x\\\\\textsf{Amount used in 2nd attempt}=1.35x[/tex]

Sami now decided to decrease the amount used by 14% for the third attempt. Therefore, to calculate the amount of caster sugar Sami used in his third attempt, we need to subtract 14% of 1.35x from 1.35x:

[tex]\textsf{Amount used in 3rd attempt}=1.35x - 14\%\;\textsf{of}\;1.35x\\\\\textsf{Amount used in 3rd attempt}=1.35x-0.14 \times 0.135x\\\\\textsf{Amount used in 3rd attempt}=1.35x-0.189x\\\\\textsf{Amount used in 3rd attempt}=1.161x[/tex]

Given that he used 255.42 g in his third attempt, we can set the expression for the amount used in the third attempt (1.161x) to 255.42 and solve for x:

[tex]1.161x = 255.42[/tex]

[tex]x=\dfrac{255.42}{1.161}\\\\\\x=220\; \rm g[/tex]

Therefore, Sami used 220 g of caster sugar in his first attempt at making a lemon drizzle cake.