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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I didn’t know this had a name. I make one in a cast iron skillet, cut it horizontally then put fresh strawberries and whipped cream in the middle like a cake. It’s strawberry shortcake at my house. I made it for my birthday last year and my brother made fun of “poor man” cake. Great stuff and it’s good buttered then add the strawberries/whipped cream. Glad it has a name! For some reason I only make it around April/May. Probably because of the fresh fruit. Thanks for posting!
Well, i’m ’bout as Su’thun as they come, but i ain’t never yet et no ho’ cake. But i’ll betcha my last jar of fig preserves i’m gonna try this tomorrow!
I completely forgot about this dish. I do have to take issue with the cake pan versus cast iron. For dishes such as this, I am definitely a cast iron snob. And my snobbery can be dismissed.
I still make this when I am in too much of a hurry to do biscuits. Make it in the cast iron skillet my Grandma gave me for my wedding shower. We love it best with butter and homemade blackberry jam.
HAL-Le-LU-JAH!!!! (That’s an excited shout, not an angry one). I grew up in Virginia in the fifties and like most professional in small southern towns (dad was an old fashion country doctor), we had a live-in cook and she made hoe cake all the time. I loved it. My wife had never heard of it and now living on the west coast, I gave up looking for someone who know of it, so this is a prayer answered! Thank you.
Found your blog when checking out some other blogger,s site for Salisbury steak recipe and she recommended your hoe cake to go with it so I had to check it out and make it.Super easy recipe and my kids and I loved it since we are big fans of bread. This will be my go to recipe when I want some bread to go along with a meal.Serving hoe cake with our roast beef dinner tonight since we’ll have beef gravy and hoe cake is awesome to clean off the gravy off our plates lol.
Welcome to Southern Plate Lisa!!! I am so glad you stopped by and am thrilled to hear you liked the HoeCake. I hope you will come back for a visit and hopefully become a part of the Southern Plate Family. We always have room for another at the table!!
My grandmother usually used buttermilk instead (milk would be used if we didn’t have enough buttermilk to eat with supper) and rolled the dough into balls, but we called them biscuits. Funny how people have different names for the same things.