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 grew up on Southern cooking and beg to differ with your commentary. Hoe Cake batter should be a cornmeal batter and a consistency thick enough that you could be able to cook it on a hoe blade over an open flame or drop into a skillet of oil or grill pan and fry like a pancake.. The recipe you have given for a Southern Hoe Cake is a drop biscuit recipe minus one tablespoon of sugar for each cup of flour. Because this recipe is cake batter consistency, a drop biscuit pan, cake pan, cup cake pan or skillet with sides is needed. If the liquid is reduced to make the batter thicker so it can hold its shape, it can be dropped by a spoon full onto a cast iron skillet and baked which will yield individual sized biscuits that are crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside. With the cake batter consistency (drop biscuit) recipe, add one cup of shredded cheddar cheese to the dry ingredients before adding the liquid. After baking brush with melted garlic butter,. and you will have the biscuits that Red Lobster serves. If with your recipe, the liquid is reduced further for a dough consistency, the dough can be pressed into an appropriately sized cast iron skillet and baked, then you have a johnny cake or journey cake. Hoe cake batter should be of a consistency that is thick enough (not soupy) that it can hold its shape on the blade of a hoe and cooked over an open flame, hence, the name hoe cake. Just saying.
You actually didn’t differ with me, but thank you for taking the time for such a well thought out comment. If you’ll notice in my introduction, I mentioned the traditional hoe cake you went into detail about. I also have several variations on this recipe on the site as well. As you demonstrated, just about any recipe (including a hoe cake made with corn meal) can be added to, modified, and altered to make limitless options – one of the joys of cooking!
I always say (and have entire posts about it) that how your Mama did it was the “right” way so while this is the only “right” hoe cake for me, yours can still be the only “right” hoe cake for you. It’s wonderful to live in the land of the free!
While you’re at it, you’ll find that life is so much better once you kick the “should”, “need to” and “supposed to”‘s out of your kitchen. Your kitchen = your rules 🙂
Have a wonderful day Bucky Buck!
Gratefully,
Christy
Christy your comment to bucky buck was well said, you said it in a much nicer way than what I would’ve. Some ppl are negative. Now as for this recipe I’m fixing to go make it, it sounds a lot like my grandma’s recipe except I think she put vanilla flavor in it, either way i’m gonna try it your way. I’ve been trying to find this recipe forever, well since my grandma passed away. Thanks for the recipe. Your right the kitchen should be limitless!
LOL, thank you Sara!! I hope you enjoy the Hoe Cake!
My grandmother and mother always made the flour version of “Hoe Cake” and I do too! I agree that what ever version you grew up on is the right version to you! We all have different variations on recipes, it does not make it wrong! I think everyone holds true to what they grew up with!
In regards to the “hoe cake”, my mother made a similar bread on wash day if there was no corn meal for cornbread or she did not have time to make biscuits. She called it “Batter Bread”. Making biscuits was too time-consuming on wash day, an all day’s job. On that day, dinner was cooked and pushed back on the wood-heating little green and ivory cookstove and we served ourselves directly from the pots and pans. She made up the batter and poured it into a hot medium size oblong “biscuit pan”. I am sure my mother learned to make Batter Bread from her mother, Sarah Elizabeth Bullock Moseley and from her grandmother Susan Haskins Bullock who settled in White County Arkansas, circa 1855 before the Civil War from North Carolina. (Some of my cousins still own part of their original land purchase along Stevens Creek near Bald Knob. I had no idea others made this type of bread, now, I must make some for myself. Most people in early days “made do” with what they had; no flour? No biscuits. Home -grown cornmeal? Then it was some type of bread made with cornmeal. People used iron kettles and iron Dutch ovens in, or hanging in the fireplace. I have really enjoyed reading this blog and your experiences. I can identify with a lot of what I have read here. Thank you, Christy, for letting me chime in. I must look you and “Mamma” up when and IF I ever get to visit my daughter in your general area. Can’t wait!
I am a 65 year old 4th generation “Florida Cracker”!! Thanks for keeping Hoe Cake alive 🙂
Good for dippin’ in peanut butter and syurp 🙂
My Granny and Mama taught me to make dressing using Hoe cake and Cornbread(((((((((( NO SUGAR IN MY CORNBREAD!!!!!) AND EVERYONE LOVES MY DRESSING . I THINK I COULD REALLY SALE IT CAUSE IT IS SOOOOOOOO GOOD …..JUST SAYING .
Most people don’t know what a Hoe Cake Is my Mama taught me how to make hoe cake when I was a little girl I still make them and I cook homemade fatback gravy.to go alone with it ……… Mmmmmmmm I am making me hungry : )
Bless you for sharing this recipe. My grandmother used to make it for me (at my request) every time I was over for a visit. The only variation is that she fried it on low heat in her cast iron skillet with a little butter. I LOVED IT and have been looking for the recipe for quite some time. Many thanks.
I hope you get to make it soon Meka!!
My mom made it too. But after cooked, it would resemble more like a huge pancake. I think she got here a tad more like pancake batter. But used the same ingridients. She cooked on top of the stove in an iron skillet, sorta like the old farmers used to do using their ‘hoe'(ie hoe cake). After cooked and still hot put butter in middle like a bisquit. Yum, good…
big ole pancke ! lol
At the “camp ground” ,open fire,in a skillet! Us “Southern Folks”,have to keep these Home Grown delights going! 4th generation Florida Cracker at the age of 65 and Proud 🙂
My Mom used a hoe cake in her Thanksgiving dressing, along with cornbread. I always thought she made up the term because I had never heard of it anywhere else, other than her recipe. Today I decided to google “hoe cake” and found this recipe. Mom is probably laughing at me right now in Heaven. Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I’m making her dressing, which has now become MY signature dish for the Holidays. 🙂