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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Have you ever heard of “Chocolate Gravy”? It is a sweetened chocolate sauce that has butter in it and it is served for breakfast over top of bisquits. Oh I love it. It is a Tennessee Recipe, out of middle Tennessee. I’ve heard of it from a guy from Utah and one from Arkansas but they both had the recipe from family that had been in Tennessee. My mother got it from a school girlfriend. She would make it at her home and then she made it for us kids. It was one of those recipes they just had in their head and did it by look but my sister got her to stop and let her measure everything so we have a recipe that comes out very well every time, sometiing Mom’s didn’t always do. Most of the kids love it but spouses don’t as well. We think of this as my Mom’s recipe and now our grandkids love it.
Hey! Sure have and it’s just heaven. I have a tutorial on how to make it on this site, it was one of the first tutorials I ever did!:)
Great minds think alike!
I always thought hoe cake was synonymous with cornbread. Or a cornbread bisquit mix. is this the same as “Johnny cake”? They carried johnny cake on trips when they went someplace and i guess i always thought it was hoe cake and I thought it was made from corn meal as corn grows so well in the south. I don’t know how well wheat grows there. We usually think of the plains for wheat. But they did have flour in cloth floursakes that soon became dresses and aprons for the women and girls and sometimes shirs for boys. Things like fruit cake was usually apple cake as apple was a fruit they had and it stored easily. There are other southern fruit, too, but they referred to them by name more specifically. Apples, like potatoes could be put in cool places and stored for a long period of time.
I am from WV. My dad who would have been 91 this year, actually in 2 days, on April 3, 2011, worked in the coal mines as did many WV men years ago. This was all before I was born. He was in a slate fall and was injured very badly. So badly that he could not work for several years and my mom had to go out to work to keep body and soul together. They had 2 children then (i was a surprise several years later). Since mom had to go out to work, my dad cooked. Recently, my brother told me of all of this (I knew he had been hurt, but not a lot else about that time period). My brother was telling me about dad making vegetable soup and a big biscuit–hoe cake must have been what he was talking about.
In later years, as I was growing up and off to college, my dad used to make homemade hushpuppies and put them in a bread bag to send with me back to college when I went back from a weekend home. Also, a staple that went back with me was his homemade pound cake. Had to threaten roommates to stay out of my food!! A nice memory. Made me smile.
What a wonderful memory!! Thank you so much for sharing Tania!
This is exactly how my pawpaw cooks his hoe cake…it’s sooo dang good!! Just wanted you to know, this website it so great…..It’s like having all my mawmaw’s recipes to a T…..cuz ya know…..she doesn’t measure anything! a dash of this a pinch of that…..mine never turns out the same…..but this is great!!
Got some in the oven right now!! Gonna have it with stew beef & gravy, rice and green beans!! YUMMO!!!
Does it matter what kind of milk you use? We usually have 2% in the fridge
I thought Hoe Cakes were made from corn meal. That was how my grandma did it. Love them with cane syrup.