Rare Southern Hoe Cake Recipe
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If you like biscuits, you’re guaranteed to love this rare but delectable recipe for southern hoe cake.
Hoe cake (also known as a Johnny cake) seems to be a rather elusive recipe, even among southerners. Apart from my own, I have only one friend whose family still makes it. Even among us though, the variations are vast. His family makes their cornmeal hoe cakes using cornmeal and buttermilk, as seems to be the custom among recipes found on the web. While this style of generally resembles a , a is typically fluffier and doesn’t include . Meanwhile, my family’s version uses flour and produces a bread that looks like buttermilk biscuits, but with a lighter and fluffier texture and crispy coating.
Either way you look at it, hoe cake is revered by those who know of it. I am sure its origin sprang forth much like the rest of our classic southern dishes – too little time and too few ingredients. While it is a simple food to make, it will easily take over the starring role at your dinner table.
I can honestly say that this is a rare recipe for Southern hoe cakes, having searched and not found it anywhere online. I do hope you will try it and guarantee that if you like biscuits, you’ll love our southern hoe cake recipe. Serve your hoe cake as a side dish with maple syrup, apple butter, or butter with a drizzle of honey or sprinkle of sugar. It tastes best accompanying your favorite Southern-style main meal. I recommend fried chicken, chicken and gravy (use the hoe cake to soak up the gravy, yum), North Alabama-style pulled BBQ chicken, or pork chops.
Recipe ingredients
Recipe ingredients- Self-rising flour. If you don’t have self rising flour where you are, go here for the formula of how to make your own.
- Vegetable shortening
- Whole milk
Helpful Kitchen Tools
Combine two cups of self-rising flour and 1/2 cup of shortening in a .
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Pour a thin layer of vegetable oil into the bottom of a cake pan.
This is where the old folks use a cast iron skillet like you would make cornbread. However, at the time of this tutorial, Mama had yet to hand down a cast iron skillet to me so I figured a cake pan with a wee bit of wear on it is just as good. Either way, you’re going to add enough oil to cover the bottom of your cake pan and then stick it in the oven while it preheats.
Add one cup of milk to your and stir with a spoon until all wet.
It should look like this.
You can add about a quarter of a cup more of milk if need be, but what we are aiming for here is soupy biscuit batter.
All that brown is the crispy bread. This is SO GOOD!
Cut it any way you choose, add some apple butter and dig in!
Recipe Notes
- If you want to make this southern hoe cake a savory side dish like , you can easily add in jalapenos, grated cheese, or chopped fried bacon with a drop of .
Storage
- If you have leftovers, store them in an airtight container in the fridge for up to four days.
- Otherwise, you can freeze hoe cake in a sealed container or bag for up to three months.
- When you need to reheat the hoe cake, it’s best to place the slices on a baking sheet in a 350-degree oven for five to 10 minutes.
Recipe FAQs
What do you serve with hoe cake?
Serve your hoe cake as a side dish with maple syrup, apple butter, or butter with a drizzle of honey or sprinkle of sugar. It tastes best accompanying your favorite Southern-style main meal. I recommend fried chicken, chicken and gravy (use the hoe cake to soak up the gravy, yum), North Alabama-style pulled BBQ chicken, or pork chops.
Where does the name hoe cake come from?
Just like there are a few variations of hoe cake recipes, there are some variations in the explanation of how it got its name. It appears to have first been recognized in print in 1745, according to the Oxford Dictionary. But others have pointed out that the term hoe was used for cooking and it was similar to a griddle. And that my friends seems to be where the term hoe cake (or should it be ?) got its name.
Can you make hoe cake gluten-free?
Yes, you can easily make this southern hoe cake recipe gluten-free. Just simply use gluten-free self-rising flour instead and follow the below instructions.
Ingredients
- 2 cups self-rising flour
- 1 cup milk
- 1/2 cup vegetable shortening
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425. Pour a thin layer of oil to cover the bottom of an eight-inch round cake pan and place it in the oven to heat.
- Cut shortening into the flour well. Pour milk in and stir until wet.
- Pour into the well-heated pan and bake for fifteen to twenty minutes or until browned.
- Invert onto plate.
Nutrition
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this is like my great grand mother, but she did hers on top of the stove, but she did hers by eye, so it helps me to have the amount of this and that, as far as the oven, i just need to keep an eye on top of hoe cake, when golden brown, flip it out and give a good old yell, come and get it.
This looks great, but I guess I missed it. If you don’t have self-rising flour, what do you do differently?
Thanks a bunch!
😉
Shirley
I make this all the time…only I put a little bacon grease in mine as well as in my skillet to bake it…
Christy,
My Gran’pappy used to make this for us all of the time, but he called it Fisherman’s bread. I still make it today, and my recipe is exactly the same as yours. I have also just used a cake pan, as that was how Gran’pappy did his. I have a wonderful cast iron skillet that belonged to my Granny, though, so I might have to give that a shot with the Fisherman’s bread!
I enjoy your website very much…so many of your recipes remind me of the cooking I enjoyed at my grandparent’s table. I’m happy to have all of their recipes. I’ve just lost the last of my four beloved grandparents. Each of them just happened to have a dish that they were “known” for, and when I make that dish, it’s a comfort to me…knowing that they live on in my heart.
Celeste
Do use that cast iron! It’s made to use, and makes a great crust
on baked goods of all kinds. I could go on for hours about cast iron and the things it does better than any other cookware you can buy (like browning meat, going from stove to oven to BBQ Pit, etc., etc.) but there have been volumes written on the subject.
My specific childhood memories are of pinto beans served with crusty corn bread and wonderfully browned skillet potatos (both cooked in cast iron of course)! Mmm Mmm Mmm…
You should consider yourself VERY lucky to have hierloom cast iron! I feel very fortunate to have cast iron handed down through the family also. I have pieces that my mother bought in the 60’s (corn bread pans) as well as skillets handed down from my father’s grandmother (these are late 1800’s or very early 1900’s)!
The older the cast iron gets the better it cooks, and it will last forever if it is given basic care. I plan to hand ours down to our daughter, and on to her children. I like thinking that I am using something that generations of my family have used, and that generations MORE hopefully will as well. I consider the cast iron to be an amazing inheritance, physically connecting me with generations of my family, past present and future!
Brian
I remember my grandmother making hoecake, but it was boiled. She made it in a soup she called green beans, potatoes, and hoecake. (It was a soup where ham was the meat). Once we were ready to eat, she would mix up the hoecakes, but they would be thick enough to roll out. It would be rolled out just smaller than the size of the pot, laid on the top of the liquid, then when it would sink, she would take it out and repeat until they were all cooked. The ingredients were the same as your recipe. Anyone recall this dish???
OMG!!!! finally a hoe cake recipe that only uses milk n flour. my mama brought me up on hoe cakes however her recipe is a lil different. we use the milk n flour of course but use bacon fat drippings and cook it in a cast iron skillet. However a large skillet works too. I love love love hoe cakes and am grateful to see you share this recipe!!!
This recipe is more like my drop biscuits recipe. My hoecake is very dougy you need to need out to form to the skillet and fixed on top the stove, hence the need for less liquid.