Southern Hoe Cakes are little cornmeal pancakes that are wonderfully crispy around the edges. Serve them warm and top them with butter for a delicious southern breakfast or treat any time of day.
Similar To Cornbread
This classic southern recipe is wonderfully easy. The batter is basically a cornbread batter so these cute little pancakes are basically fried cornbread. Yum!
Hoe Cakes Origin
Hoe Cakes may seem like a strange name but it was thought that they got their name because they were cooked on a hoe over an open flame, but now it is thought that the name comes from the name of the griddle pan they were cooked in.
Hoe Cakes were a staple of early American life in the South, but you’ll find their name varies some in different regions of the south. Some areas refer to them as Johnny Cakes, corn pone, or corn cakes.
How To Serve
Hoe Cakes are typically either served for breakfast like pancakes or with a bowl of greens (typically collard or turnip greens). When served with greens, they are used to mop up the pot licker, the tasty liquid that the greens are cooked in. Try spreading pimento cheese on them for an amazing appetizer.
Hoe Cakes are made from self-rising cornmeal, self-rising flour, a touch of sugar, eggs, oil, and buttermilk. I use bacon grease to fry these Southern Hoe Cakes in but it’s more common to use vegetable oil. Feel free to do so.
If you love okrs, try these fabulous Okra Hoecakes!
Try These Other Classic Southern Recipes
Southern Hoe Cakes
Ingredients
- 1 cup self-rising flour
- 1 cup self-rising cornmeal mix
- 1 tablespoon sugar
- 1/4 teaspoon salt
- 3/4 cup buttermilk
- 2 large eggs
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1/4 cup bacon drippings
- butter
Instructions
- Combine flour, cornmeal mix, sugar, and salt in a medium bowl.
- Measure buttermilk in a glass measuring cup. Add eggs to measuring cup and whisk egg and buttermilk together. Pour into bowl with flour mixture.
- Pour water and vegetable oil into bowl and mix everything together.
- Heat a cast iron pan or nonstick skillet or griddle. Add bacon grease.
- Pour batter into pan to form hoe cakes, using about 2 tablespoons of batter for each one. I use a 1/4 cup measuring cup and fill it about half way.
- Cook until bubbles form on top, flip over and cook until bottom is golden.
- Serve with butter.
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links.
Tastes just like my grandmother’s and my great aunt’s fried cornbread! Decided to try the recipe with my white chicken chili…Oh my tastebuds! Heavenly! @spicysouthernkitchen
Happy cooking!
Jil
I grew up on how cakes with green beans and dry beans. They were oh so good and my grandmother made them just like your recipe! Boy did she know how to cook! Thanks for sharing this awesome southern country recipe!
Hoe cakes was made when you had no money and simple indigents. Some was made with cormeal and some made with with flour. Cook on the stove top are in the oven.
I remember growing up, my grandmother used to cook hoe cakes everytime we visited . And now, my husband loves me to make them, but he loves syrup on his. It’s yummy ! Try it 😁
I can’t help but notice people are confusing what I always knew as corn pone and hoe cakes. Corn pone is cornmeal and hot water that is then fried. Hoe cakes are more like this recipe, given understanding there will be slight regional variations. It’s not a hoecake if it’s just cornmeal and water. They are two separate and very different things.
Both good of course, but I sure wouldn’t go and call fried chicken and baked chicken the same thing. Yet they have many more things in common than hoecakes and pone do. Same with chicken fried steak and country fried steak, they are seperate dishes even though they both share some ingredients.
It just speaks to southern ingenuity with how many dishes we have. My great grandmother lived through the depression and she was the craftiest person I know. Don’t matter what’s on hand she could always whip up something amazing for dinner.
Thanks for shaing awesome post i like it yoyur post
this is Awesome i love it and keep it up
Just the recipe I was looking for! Made exactly as you said, bacon grease and all. A big hit with beef stew instead of corn bread. Thanks for posting!
I had never heard of hoe cakes till today when I found letters from men in my great grandfather’s unit in the Civil Ware – the 141st Regiment of the NY Inf – that were published in a NY town newspaper. At this point they were with Sherman marching through Georgia: “Then collecting all
the horses, mules and wagons on the plantation, load the forage, and make our exit as quickly as we came; unless those of
the party who were prone to yield to the
cravings of appetite, could obtain a permit from the officer in command to seek
for delicacies in the cellar, where we generally succeeded in finding butter, eggs,
&c. Then proceeding to the kitchen, inform Dinah that ‘hoe cakes’ would be acceptable; and soon make her eyes open
wide with astonishment at the ravages of
Yankee appetites among warm hoe cakes
and butter. “
Johnny cakes were made in our home when I was a little girl and we loved them. I’m going to make some soon and I thank you for reminding me how good they are.