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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Hello, my grandmother used to make hoecakes for me as a little girl and even after i grew up, I’d beg her to make them for me. They were the best. The. Best. After meeting some of my southern family members, I asked for the recipe and they gave some version that seemed like a fried cornmeal mush. What?!!!!!
This is what I’m used to. Thank you for sharing your recipe but I think I’ll cook mine like she did hers, on top of stove in a cast iron skillet.
I ate hoe cake as a child, this is the recipe that i rember, i do not remember corn meal. i also had home made syrup. which is made with sugar and water. great
Hoe cakes (a/k/a Johnnycakes) are traditionally made from corn meal — there are many variations. Refer to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonnycake
Many “modern” variations are a combination of corn meal and flour.
My grandkids and I use a “Jiffy Mix” and make them in my black skillet – they love them.
I was raised by my father (an older man) who was raised in the N.E. part of Alabama. This is alot like his. If no milk was in the fridge he used water. Water makes for a little chewier bread. We had this for breakfast most mornings as he could knock (his words) it up in a couple of minutes. My dad make this for me the last time I ate it (about 20 yrs. ago). I think it will be on my breakfast table tomorrow morning :o) thanks for sharing
Just had to share – I got to thinking about hoe cake last night & remembered that your recipe sounded a lot like how my mom made it, so I pulled this recipe up. BUT, while I used your time & temp info, used my recipe for beer biscuits – 2 cups flour, 3 Tbsp sugar, 3/4 cup beer. Had to double it for my big cast iron skillet (because that’s what Mom used) and man, was it good. Too good – I probably could’ve eaten the whole danged thing! The beer gives it a bit of a yeasty flavor. With butter and fig preserves – heaven!
And yes, I’ve made the little cornmeal hoecakes too (my granny made those when we had fresh fish from her pond, mom always made cornbread).
I love the way you handle the people that post rude things just because they think they are right. Anyone living in our beautiful south should know that all things are right when done the way you know how. My great granny used to make biscuit dough and refrigerate it and she would take some out and pat them out flat and put them in a cast iron frying to cook. When they were brown, she would take them out of the pan, and make scrambled eggs in the same pan. We loved this for breakfast because it was made with love and because Granny did it “her way”.Wish I had some right now.!
I come from farming families both in the US in Kentucky and in Italy and in both cases we made and enjoyed hoe cakes. Ours were made with nothing but ground corn meal, water, salt and rendered pig fat. They were flat and dense and had a great corn flavor, of course the fat made it taste good too. When I worked at a historic home we made hoe cakes on the wood fire and sold them to those who came to see the cooking of the late 1700’s. I know that the times changed in the US where the recipe included flour, milk, sometimes egg but for the purposes of our demonstration we did it from the recipe found in the builders of the home dated 1787.
I’m from KY and we make hoecakes when we go camping. Since we don’t have an oven out in the wilderness; we make hoecakes on the stovetop (individually like pancakes). Then we have hoecakes with milk gravy, bacon and eggs. I look forward to camping every year just so I can eat them.
I made this last night after coming across your site and it was amazing. We don’t have hard shortening similar to the kind you can get in the US, so I used soft margarine and mine came out a little doughy in the middle, but I think I overfilled my cake pan. Either way it was great! We had it with corn, fried chicken and a few boiled potatoes. I’m English and my boyfriend is Norwegian so I can promise you it was a new one on both of us, but will definitely be made again, though I want to try your cornbread first (just as soon as I can find cornmeal in our shops.)