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
You may also like these recipes:
Easy Birthday Cake Recipe From Scratch
Biscuit Class – Classic 3 Ingredient Biscuits
Garlic Cream Biscuits with Bacon Gravy
Good job my sweet dear friend.
Now I’m thinking I have to make this….but can I use skim milk or will it not firm up right?
Christy, I adore you. You handled that in such a polite manner… much nicer than most! and I will ALWAYS let my daughter on southern plate because I know that its safe, even if she is just figuring out the whole reading thing, because I know she adores the pictures and the extended feeling of family!
Let’s call this what it really is….one big biscuit! The Hoecake is, by definition, cooked on a hot, flat surface (pan/hoe…what ever)AND is made with cornmeal. It should look just like a pancake when finished and taste like cornbread. My mother (who was a 100% English war bride) learned her recipe from my father’s family…a swarthy pack of Kentucky hillbillies, and we kids (all now circling the 60yr. mark) would spread jelly or jam on them…hey, we were just kids! We also would put ketchup on spinach and mayonnaise on our scrambled eggs: haute cuisine passed down from Dad. So don’t try to pass off an oven-baked biscuit as a Hoecake! Sorry…..didn’t mean to (word removed by Christy because this is a family friendly site) in anyone’s cornflakes.
Dear Ricky,
thank you so much for taking the time to comment. As all of my regular readers know, my policy on Southern Plate is that “How your mother did it was the RIGHT way” in all situations. As such , I respect and cherish anyone’s fond memories and value their recipes every bit as much as my own. Sounds like you had a wonderful family growing up and one of those classic childhoods that yields an all around great person!
I hope I won’t have to edit comments in the future, though. We’re a very family friendly site and I enjoy getting to share my mother’s “right way” of doing things with people from all walks of life. A lot of folks allow their children to visit Southern Plate and I don’t take that responsibility lightly. See, SouthernPlate is my home and I’m the Mama ’round these parts ;).
I hope you have a wonderful day. Respect for others and their traditions is a great thing to have! Bless you and yours.
Gratefully,
Christy
…..guess I should have omitted the last line. Sorry…..
~smiles~ It’s all good, Ricky. Sit down and I’ll fix ya some tea…
You hungry? Doesn’t really matter if you’re not, coz you know I’m gonna have to feed you anyway.
~grins~
By the way, hon. If you read around the site you’ll see a lot of writing about Ricky. That would be my husband.
This is like the hoecakes my grandmother made, except she did do them in a cast iron skillet and added cracklins to it….mmmmm!! good with pancake syrup and lots of real butter…..I was so glad to see this recipe because when I looked it up online, I mostly saw recipes with cornmeal that sounded like cornmeal pancakes — not at all what I think of as a hoecake — then I saw yours….makes my mouth water to think about it!!
OMG!! found your site when I was looking for a hoecake recipe. Your recipe is exactly like my mama used to make on Saturday mornings when we had a country breakfast. I grew up in Michigan, but my mama was an Arkansan (where I’ve moved back to – sooooeee pig!) who never cooked any other way except Southern. She never taught me her recipes because she wanted me spend all my time ‘getin an education’ rather than being stuck in the kitchen. So while she was cooking, I was studying and just got to enjoy the foods she made. She did teach my 16 years younger sister some of her recipes. When I graduated and set up my own household, I always called her when I wanted to fix some of the dishes I grew up on. She passed away 15 years ago, and I basically had to rely on soul food restaurants to get a hint of southern cooking. When I took an early retirement, I moved ‘back home’ to Arkansas. I live in a co-op where there are a lot of senior citizens. When I asked some of the ‘folks’ around here about how to cook something, most of the time they will tell me the ingredients (“Aw, you use a litte flour, a pinch of salt, some grease and some water or buttermilk and put it the pan and cook it.”) but not how to cook it! Love my southern folks, but precise measuring is not part of their make-up. LOL! Anywho, I am so, so, so happy to have found your website cause it’s got all the recipes I grew up on and now have the time to cook. My mama used to cook her hoecake on top of the stove in a cast iron skillet using a little bacon grease to coat it. She always used a big ‘pancake turner’ and her fingers to flip it when it was done on one side. Because we were poor too, she used lard, flour and water to make the dough. Oh, the smell of it cooking always made my mouth water! I have not tried your recipe yet because I have to buy some shortening (sorry, it’s my Northern ways showing through…got cooking spray and canola oil – no lard or shortening ☺)and I want to make it as authentic as possible (I’ll tweak it later if necessary. But from all the comments, I don’t think I’ll have to do much of that ☺). And then to top off the wonder of finding your site and the hoecake recipe, I FINALLY FOUND my mama’s Fried Apple Pies she was famous in Michigan for making. My daddy said her pies was one of the main reasons he married her – ☺!! Mama taught my little sister how to fry them, but she never taught her how to make them up. The last time I had those was right after she passed away while cleaning out her deep freezer, I found some pre-made apple filling she had frozen for later use. My sister fried them up and we hugged, cried together and enjoyed ‘Miz Ethel’s Fried Apple Pies’. Thanks to you, now when I go to visit my little sister, I can carry on the tradition of fixin’ hoecake and fried apple pies just like Mama’s. Thank you for helping me recapture the great southern cooking we grew up on!!
Those look amazing! They look JUST like our family’s buttermilk biscuits! (we just use oil) Have you ever tried this in an iron skillet? and, a hunk of cheese rolled up in the biscuits…. THEN cut open and spread with molasses or dark karo… I know weird, but, GOOD!!!
Lovin’ this site and reading about you, Christi!
I was raised in Macon, Ga. I now live in Louisiana. My mother
and grandmother both made wonderful hoe cake. My grand mother made hers on a woodburning stove. These were always the best. My mother and Grandma also cooked theirs on top of the stove. I make hoe cake often now. I use the same recipe as yours except I always use buttermilk. As you said , noone ever makes hoecake. Most have never heard of it. I had nener heard of cornmeal hoecakes.
Keep up the traditional cooking. IUt is becoming a lost art.