Rare Southern Hoe Cake Recipe
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
- 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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Just like the hoecake my Georgia grandmother made, except grandma cooked the whole thing on top of the stove! I’ve done the same on camping trips when I didn’t have an oven.
Constance, did she fry it in an iron skillet? I have been looking for the recipe my granny used when I was a kid (I’m 64 now) and they either have cornmeal in them (which she did not use) or they are baked in the oven. Have you tried this one on top of the stove? Thanks in advance and have a blessed day~~di
That’s exactly what I’m looking for.
So happy to hear that Chantel! Let me know how you like it 🙂
Sounds just like my mama’s ‘hoe cake’ ‘cept she baked it in hot oven – I’d love to try doing it in cast iron pan on stove top. Does anyone have the details for stovetop . . like how hot and how long to cook it?
Diane my mama always did it on the stovetop in a cast iron skillet and so do I!! So good
My mammaw called it biscuit bread and made them on the stove top. A quick bread for supper and Looked just like pancakes.
glad I found this recipe again. my granny got me hooked on this. I just about cried when it came out the same. great memories. Thank you for this.
My grandfather(born 1917) taught me a hoe cake recipe(we used flour and corn meal interchangeably), but we cooked them on a literal garden hoe. He said that his granddad cooked his the same way. We used bacon grease rather than the lard my grandmother normally used. Worked until about lunch time; then made a fire, boiled creek water, mixed the batter, washed the hoe in the creek, got the hoe hot over the fire, put a little bacon grease on it, and cooked a handful of hoe cakes. Milk was kept in a mason jar in the same creek. We then went back to the house, but he wanted me to know what they did for a hot lunch when share cropping away from their home garden. He also taught me to plow with a mule at 9 years old; as every boy should he said. I miss those simple days.
Made this for years. Difference is Milk or Water Self rising flour and cook in cast iron skillet on top of the stove like a pancake. awesome
Man I’m so happy to finally find this recipe. I’m making it tomorrow. The ones before me are gone, and I remember having this hoecake often as a kid. Grandpaw would whoop it up and cook it in one of his iron skillets. I guess it wasn’t that long ago, I’m still in my 40s, but everyone left so quickly. Find myself asking people how to make “this and that” and no one knows. My mother would make it too because of course being from South Alabama, she was raised on it too. She left too soon also. Anyway, from time to time as kids we’d also get this but with blueberries we picked in the woods, just hoecake with a bunch of blueberries cooked in it, and wasn’t sweet, I’m not sure sugar was even in it. I just remember fluffy, flour, bready biscuit-like with a bunch of blueberries doing the flavoring. Anyone ever had that as a kid from their previous family generation? Anyway, thanks fire having this available. I can’t wait to have it again.
So glad you found us and the recipe Richard. Enjoy!
My grandmother made both cornbread hoecake & the biscuit type used above. She cooked hers on top of the stove & somehow managed to turn it over so that both top & bottom had a crust.
My mom made the flour type in a skillet
on top of the stove. We always had it with pinto beans.
Love this recipe with pintos!! Hope you get to make the Hoe Cake soon!
can you use buttermilk?
The reason they are called hoe cakes is because they were made in the fields. At mealtime the people working in the fields would clean their hoes off and make a fire and cook these cakes on the hoe over a fire. Originally they had cornmeal in them, but I’m sure the recipes were made with what people had.
Finally someone that knows what a real hoe cake is.
thank you so much for your comment 🙂