Southern Hoe Cake Recipe
Hoe 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 it using corn meal as seems to be the custom among recipes found on the web. My family’s version uses flour and produces a bread much like buttermilk biscuits in flavor only with a lighter and fluffier texture and crispy outsides.
Either way you look at it, hoe cake is revered by those who know of it. I am sure its origins sprang forth much like the rest of our southern dishes – too little time and too few ingredients. It is a simple food to make but will easily take over the starring role at your dinner table. Once you see how simple it is to make, it will take a starring role in your dinner preparations as well!
I made hoe cake for my in laws for the first time this past weekend. Even though they are from Georgia, they had never had it either! It was requested and made the following meal as well, where a pint and a half of fresh apple butter was ate along with it!
I can honestly say that this is a rare recipe, 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 hoe cake.
Ingredients for this are a cinch. Self rising flour (White Lily, of course!), vegetable shortening, and whole milk. If you don’t have self rising flour where you are, go here for the formula of how to make your own.
To two cups of self rising flour, add 1/2 cup of shortening.
Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Pour a thin layer of vegetable oil in the bottom of a cake pan. This is where the old folks use a cast iron skillet but 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 ~grins~. 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.
*I am happy to report that I now have a cherish cast iron skillet from my Mama but I still go back and forth between a cake pan and cast iron when making this (whichever on I grab first) so don’t you dare go feeling bad for whichever one you choose to use.
You want this oil to be good and hot.
It should look like this. You can add about a fourth of a cup more of milk if need be. What we are making here is soupy biscuit batter.
Bake at 425 degrees until browned on top, fifteen to twenty minutes.
Remove from oven when it looks like this and turn out onto a plate so it is upside down.
All that brown is the crispy bread. This is SO GOOD! Cut it any way you choose and dig in!
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 in oven to heat.
- Cut shortening into flour well. Pour milk in and stir until wet.
- Pour into well heated pan and bake for fifteen to twenty minutes or until browned.
- Invert onto plate.
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Posted by Christy Jordan
on Jul 8 2008. Filed under Breads, FEATURED Southern Favorites!, Southern Plate Kids.
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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.
Hey, I was reading your post and I just wanted to say thank you for putting out such excellent content. Thanks for the article and great ideas.
My mother made something that she called “hoecake,” except she fried it in a hot, greased cast-iron skillet on top of the stove. These hoecakes were only about 3/4 of an inch thick, light brown outside and softer inside. We ate them either with butter and syrup, or with smothered potatoes and onions. I have been searching forever for the recipe since Mama died without me getting it! I’m thinking that Mama’s were more flour, water, baking soda based. (When asked why they were called “hoecakes,” Mama said slaves and sharecroppers often cooked them by placing them on a hoe blade held over a fire!) Thank you for this recipe & I will be trying it!
My grandfather made hoe cakes for me as a child also. He cooked them in a cast iron skillet and would flip them over. What a wonderful story you posted, I did not know where the name hoe cake came from. I am headed to the kitchen.
[...] to ten minutes longer. Spoon into large bowl and dig in!! These are great served alongside beans, hoe cake, and any type of country meat, such as Steak and [...]
This brings back fond memories of my Mom!
Thanks so much for sharing this recipe. I felt like making hoe cake for dinner tonight, but forgot my Mom’s recipe.
My mother’s passed away 16 yrs ago. She grew up in New Jersey, but her family roots are in Georgia and Alabama. As a single mother of six, she was always on a tight budget. As long as she had some flower, shortening, milk and baking powder, she could whip up a meal. Hoe cake was a staple. She used to make it on its own or out of left over homemade biscuit batter. We would fight over who got the Hoe cake.
She also loved to can preserve fruits (mason jars). She would serve the hoe cake with warm peach, apple or strawberry preserves. She would also sometimes make her own homemade syrup.
[...] Mama’s Hoe Cake [...]
i have had and have made hoe cake all my life , i make mine on top of the stove but am sure going to try the oven , that way i will not have to stay with it so much. thanks, i will probably make it more often now
The link to the formula for making self-rising flour is not working. HELLLLP!!
Hi Jean B., in her book Christy says to add 1.5 teaspoons baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt for every 1 cup of flour to make self-rising flour.
This looks delish!
Would you recommend using butter instead of oil? Or have you tried it with butter? I was thinking it would add a little flavor to it.
thanks for a great site!
I use bacon grease. but I think butter would be good too.
I made these with butter and it was heaven. The taste of biscuits in the shape of cornbread!
When I was growing up, I often spent weekends with my Grandaddy at our one room cabin. Many days, we would put a pot of dried pinto beans on the wood stove to cook before going out to hike the better part of the day. Granddaddy would always make a hoe cake to have along with the beans. I thought that was the best food on earth! And if we had any of the hoe cake left over, we would have it with some black strap molasses for “dessert”. Yum! Good stuff!
I haven’t had this since I was a little girl. Now we have it once or twice a week. It’s fantastic with honey butter. Thanks for the recipe!
I was looking for the shoofly pie recipe and searched molasses, saw the cheesy hashbrown recipe that came up cause you made this with it and put out molasses to eat with it. roundabout way to come across a great recipe. my mom used to make these but she did them more like pancakes and called them flapjacks. yummy!!
This is a different kind of hoe cake, my grandmother used corn meal and she cooked it on top of the stove in an iron skillet. But this will be a nice recipe to try for breakfast!!!
My husband had always talked about hoe cake, but couldn’t remember how it was made. He is from Eufaula & his grandparents used to make it all the time, but never wrote the recipe down. Glad we found this recipe so we can share some of his childhood recipes with our son!
I was raised as a country girl in SC by my grandmother – we alway made hoecakes exactly like your recipe. It has been a long time since I have had
one since I am now diabetic and can’t have too many carbs but your recipe
bring back so many great memories, I plan to make one in the near future and probably eat most of it myself. We did use a cast iron frying pan and a wood
stove to bake ours in. I love those old laid back days when we did a full days
work without being so tired like we are now with all of our modern conveniences.
I am 70 y/o and would love to go back to those days again.
There’s just nothing like the good ol’ days Genie!
mmmmm… this was just like Mama’s. Thanks
So glad you enjoyed!! Mama’s is always the best!
I learned to make it from a 70+ year old man in Dunlap, Tn who was wheelchair bound due to childhood polio…. he always called it “biscuit bread” Always made in a cast iron skillet and served with fried taters and white gravy…… oh man…. I’m drooling!
Mmmmm!!! Now that is a meal!
what is wrong with cast iron skillets?
How about all that teflon stuff (or whatever it is now) they put in the new pots and pans . I’m not so sure it is good for you.
My husband also told me about the hoe cakes his mom cooked on the old wood stove in the cast iron pans.
Hey Irene. Welcome to the SouthernPlate family!
This is a post from when I first started. You can read my comments for further insight on cast iron.
Hope to see you often!
Gratefully
Christy
Hi Christy. My mom made hoecake from corn meal, water, salt and lard (or bacon drippings) in a cast iron skillet on top of the stove. I don’t have the recipe though, so do you by chance have anything similar? Mom has dementia now, and doesn’t remember those good old recipes that were in her head. I miss her good cookin’ — she was known county-wide for her food!
My Mother-in-law makes Hoe cakes – didn’t know what they were called, until now.
This brings back so many childhood memories..My Dad was a waterman and this is the way they made bread when they were in the bay working with clams, oysters,etc. and they called it “Down the Bay” bread. And yes, they cooked it on top of the little boat stove in an iron frying pan. My brother and I would always be begging Daddy to make us “Down the Bay” bread.. I have heard of hoe cakes, but never knew it was the same bread that Daddy made. As Bob Hope would say..Thanks for the memory.
Just made this hoecake for the first time ever. Never had it before, as my family always either made cornbread or biscuits, nothing like this (yes and I’m a Georgia native… mom’s family is from AL). I loved it!! The kids loved it too. My hubby kept expecting it to be cornbread so he was a bit disappointed. I’ll convert him yet, though!
My 12 year old made these for us tonight. EXCELLENT. We already have a hoe cake recipe, so we chose a different garden tool. Gonna call them RAKE CAKE!!
I grew up eating this, but never knew how to make it untl now, thank you so much! We didn’t call it hoe cake, as a matter of fact, we didn’t have a name for it. I remember eating it with homemade apple butter, too. And tomato preserves. Has anyone out there ever heard of tomato preserves?
I LOVE tomato preserves. First tasted them at my Grandmothers. Haven’t found the perfect recipe yet but hoe cake and tomato preserves YUMMY!
My grandma used this recipe but instead of pouring it all in a pan,put drops on a cookie sheet and baked. We called them drop biscuits. Also, the same batter can be fried in a skillet,like pancakes, these we called flitters!
I sure do miss the good ol’ days and my granny too! Thanks Christy for reminding me of these wonderful memories!
My husband and I really enjoyed this the other night with the chicken stew! Thanks Christy for blessing us with your talents!
I just made the Southern Hoe Cake. I baked it as directed for 20 minute and the outside was beautifully browned but the middle inside was sort of gummy. Maybe after it is completely cooked it will be better. I used a glass pie plate instead of a cake pan so I don’t know if that made the difference or not but the taste is just like biscuits so I think it will be be good wth beef stew or something like that. Even with eggs for breakfast.
Indeed this is a wonderful biscuit bread. In fact that is how you will find in on the net–Biscuit Bread. I was born and bred below you in Southern Louisiana and this recipe is the same as our Biscuit Bread. Hoe Cakes are indeed cornmeal and resemble more like a pancake that we actually cooked on a hot hoe or shovel over our camp’s cooking fire. Now you know why you couldn’t find it on the Net–try Biscuit Bread.
Great recipe and great job. Keep them coming.
Oh thanks for the trip down memory lane Christy. . .There is nothing better at night than to make a hoe cake and eat it slathered in butter and homemade jelly, or whatever is on hand. If you have never had it, you must make it. This is also the recipe that I have used for years. Very quick and easy and even fluffier than a biscuit. Growing up in rural Georgia in the 50′s, we were a family of nine with a mama who loved to cook. She was raised on a farm in south Georgia so big breakfasts were a tradition. As kids on Saturday we would sometimes have fried pork chops, fried potatoes, biscuits, cheese, cantelope, bacon, homemade sausage, maybe ham and red-eyed gravy and huge bowls of grits. Lots of coffee for the adults and milk and juice for the kids. Mama would have to make two full pans of biscuits to sop up the gravy. There was never any leftovers. My friends couldn’t believe how we ate supper for breakfast. But we had a big garden and there were cotton fields across the street so all us kids had to work in one or the other. Breakfast is still my favorite meal of the day. It was a special treat when we got pancakes because mama had to stand for a long time making them one at a time in her big iron skillet. We ate them faster than she could cook them. Hoe cakes are just part of these memories. Love ‘em.
Do you think butter would work rather than vegetable shortening? I may try to use half shortening, hal butter first and see what happens.
By the way this recipe was a hit. In fact so much a hit, that I am going to have to buy a second cast iron skillet. It has stirred quite a bit of emotion with the cheese lovin’ side of the family. Cheese lovers want to add cheese and the non-cheese lovers want me to leave it alone.
I made the Hoe cake not to long ago. Maybe about a month ago. Good
Just today (thanks to unusual amount of snow in this part of Texas at this time of year…and because I’m sick ‘ta death of all the Super Bowl hype on TV)Any way…justtoday got ’round to reading your hoe cake recipe…my family has always used a cornmeal version…my old “Grannie” always told me it was called “hoe cake” because the cotton field works of by-gone years would mix them up out in the cotton field, cook them on the hoe blades over an open fire come meal time while choppin’ cotton with the very same hoes they were choppin’ cotton with….hopefully they cleaned them a little first…
[...] ready to eat. While Jordan rolls are one of my favorite breads to serve at meals, followed by my Mama’s Hoe Cake at a close second, when you’ve got a family of rumbling stomachs and the meal about to go on [...]
I thought Hoe Cakes were made from corn meal. That was how my grandma did it. Love them with cane syrup.
[...] McCain We made Hoe Cake and it was [...]
Does it matter what kind of milk you use? We usually have 2% in the fridge
Got some in the oven right now!! Gonna have it with stew beef & gravy, rice and green beans!! YUMMO!!!
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!!
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!
[...] Inman – hmmmm we have the Hoe Cake several times a week, have made the English muffins for my Mom several times also, (major hit with [...]
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.
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!
This is our new favorite go to recipe when we need bread with dinner quick. thanks for sharing the great recipe!
I am glad to hear that you are enjoying it Barbara!!
i hope this help me on this project i gotta do thnks
I made this tonight at it was just wonderful!
[...] at my house, met with the same zeal as a dessert even though it is just a bread. A variation on my Mama’s hoe cake, she often mixed up the same batter and made drop biscuits [...]
Dear Christy,
Thank you for this recipe, You have now got a fan for life!. This is exactly the way mama made this all those years ago. Except she browned hers on both sides. I remember bringing home my ex wife (From Arkansas). She’d never had it and it was an instant hit.
My gran (mama) died at 102 so this is southern food!!
Thanks so much for posting this, I have been wanting some hoe cake for a while but could only find the corn meal recipe & thats not what mama did.
God Bless
NOW DIG IN
I can’t find Self Rising/White Lily flour, what can I do?
Move to the south.
*To make your own self rising flour, simply add 1 1/2 tsp baking powder and 1/2 tsp salt for EACH cup of all purpose flour.
Hey Christy – just got my cookbook and I LOVE IT! Did you know, though, that in the cookbook it says to add 1 tsp salt for each 1 cup flour, rather than 1/2 tsp as you show on your website? I made your hoe cake last night to go with Paula Deen’s meatloaf. I was SO disappointed as the extra tsp of salt made the hoe cake way too salty. I will make it again and leave that out. Just wanted to let you know so when you have the next million printed
you could make that change. Hugs to you sweet southern girl!
This is *exactly* the mixture we use to make our biscuits, except we just use a little Crisco on the pan.
We also use this same mixture for cooking them on top of the stove in a little oil and butter.
My mama and grandma made hoe cake, but they made up thier biscuit dough and put on top of a old griddle or in a frying pan that had been greased and fried it on top of the stove,flipped it over and fried the other side , crisp and good!
Sometimes grandma would take butter, soghram syrup and sour cream and mix together to spread on the bread yummm!