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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My Grandma would make us hoe cake and I have always tried to find just the right ingredient that made hers taste different from mine. Mine always taste good and is eaten up very quickly but hers was better. It just maybe the shortening…. I use self-rising flour and buttermilk mixed together and cooked on an a well greased hot iron skillet on top of the stove with an iron lid covering it to keep the heat in. Flip it once and it’s done in about 6 minutes. Tomorrow I’ll try making it with the added shortening. A friend told me about your site. I’m glad I checked it out. I too, do not know very many people who know how to make hoe-cakes or poor-boy bread.
My nanny made these for me as a kid, but as you stated mine where made flat like a pancake. We ate them for just about any occasion. Personally i loved mine with jelly on top. Thanks for the loveing memories of my Nanny
I’m not the only one that knows this recipe!! We do ours in a cast iron skillet on the stove, but you are the only other person I have ever met outside my family that has even heard of this! It’s so nice to see we aren’t alone. We know all about the apple butter, but with us tbh it was sorghum. What my misplaced southern roots wouldn’t DO for Oma’s hoe cake with sorghum right now!
My grandparents made this for breafast when i was a kid. We use buttermilk instead of milk. And now i put sausage, bacon,eggs,jalapenos and cheese in mine and it is wonderful.
Thank you for this recipe! It’s exactly the way my grandmother used to make it in her old wood-burning stove that always made the kitchen seem way too hot! I’ve made it several times since I found the recipe, and I’ve put a big dent in our supply of apple-butter! This brings back a lot of great memories of my family and sitting around the table at breakfast with a big ol’ pone of hoecake. In fact, I believe that my aunt used to use this recipe to make a crust for pizza when she would babysit us! All the kids in the neighborhood wanted to be over when Binky made us pizza for Saturday breakfast.
Oh, my goodness! I remember my mom making this for us on a wood stove in a square cast iron skillet, which is now my most prized possession. I tried to watch her and learn (and I’m sure I was underfoot and in her way), but she didn’t use a recipe and just took “some” of this and a “pinch” of that and stirred it up and it was always so delicious. There were twelve of us, five girls and five boys and Mom and Dad, and she seemed to make food by magic out of thin air. The small cabinet had very little beside flour, salt , pepper and lard because most of the food was in the garden, made by her, right out off the kitchen door through the gate. And the chickens were on foot, running through the yard and pen. She was such an amazing woman. Trying to type through tears … I can see us now, all at the long table and mom scurrying around making sure everyone was eating. I don’t ever remember seeing her sitting to eat. That beautiful woman left us on September 8, 1997 to live with the angels. I am honored to say that I was holding her hand as she lay in a hospital bed in my living room, where she wanted to be and had been for 5 wonderful caring months. She called me mommy then and I called her baby. Thanks so much for that recipe, and the memories it brought to me this beautiful morning. Amazing how such a simple bread recipe can stir such emotions, isn’t it? Today, I’ll bake that bread in her cast iron skillet and give thanks. God Bless you.
Thanks for posting this recipe. My great grandma, born and raised in southeastern NC, used to make this wonderful bread in an iron skillet on the stove top. She called it flour bread. She passed away in the 80’s and very few people I’ve spoken with since have heard about it or seem to be familiar with it. I’ve tried to resurrect the recipe a few times, but struggle with the exact ratio of ingredients. I’ve found that sometimes it comes out more like a giant biscuit, while other times it soaks up too much shortening from the pan. For me, when it comes out just right, it’s nice and crispy on the outside, soft on the inside, and not greasy. I like to rub a little salt over the top when it’s done. Once again, thanks for posting!
I am so glad you found it Philip!!!