12 - Hoe Cake Recipe

00:01
Good morning, welcome back to the Biscuits and Gravy podcast. I'm Michelle, I'm your host. And I'm sitting here just trying to take a minute to myself. This is Black Friday. I don't do shopping on Black Friday. I really never have. I think maybe a couple of years I've gone Black Friday shopping, but that is not something that I care to do. I am way too introverted for Black Friday shopping.

00:27
So I will stick to my online things. We're actually not doing very much for Christmas this year. We just decided as a family to really just concentrate on spending time together and not spending money. We generally do more experiential gifts than we do physical gifts. So...

00:57
you know in the last few years we've gone to some Christmas plays, some Christmas musicals, we've gone on vacation, you know things like that. So but we do, we're getting our kids one big gift that they want this year each and that's about it. We've, we're just not doing the shopping this year and it's been such a relief to me to not have to think about.

01:25
coordinating with people because I usually bake gifts for Christmas and you know just making sure things are freshly baked for people and coordinating when we're gonna see them and that kind of thing has just really stressed me out plus gift-giving is not my love language at all so it's not something that I look forward to and brings me joy. I know that sounds kind of heartless doesn't it?

01:54
But it's just not. So that's something that I just decided this year I was not gonna stress myself out about. I was gonna enjoy the holidays with my family. We're going to enjoy cozying up on the couch with the Christmas tree lit and watching movies together and playing board games together and going places to experience lights and musicals and things like that together. So, all that to say, I am not out.

02:22
Black Friday shopping today and it gives me great pleasure to say that. Alright so I promised you guys a episode on hoe cake. So an episode sorry that was bad grammar. An episode on hoe cake. A lot of people when I have told them even North Carolinians when I've said to them that I'm gonna make hoe cake or that I grew up eating my grandmother's hoe cake they're

02:52
A lot of them have never heard of hoe cake. So I would love to hear from you guys. I'll probably post some stories and things on Instagram when this podcast goes live, just to hear from you to see if you've ever heard of hoe cake or if you have, then if you've made it and how you make it. Because as I was doing some research for this particular podcast, I was finding that there is a...

03:20
various amount of beliefs about hoe cake, what it is, how you make it, what the ingredients are, what it's called. So there's a lot. So I'll just give you just a brief synopsis of what I discovered as I was researching. From research, you traditionally use cornmeal in your hoe cake. So it's basically like fried cornbread is what you use.

03:49
what I was finding. A lot of people call them either hoe cake, journey cake, Johnny cake, corn cake, or corn pancake. And even we were finding that the practice of making this like fried cornbread, which makes a lot of sense to me, dates back as far as the Native Americans. And they called it Shawnee cake, which I guess is why you, why we have

04:17
Evolved the name to Johnny cake because it sounds a lot like that or journey cake There's a lot of different views on why it's called what it is Journey cake could be that it is it was easily transported. So Being able to you know, fry these little little thin You know cakes Uh and take them with you kind of like little little pancakes and take them with you places they were

04:46
they would stay good for a while, that kind of thing. I'm not sure, I don't think I ever really found out why they were called Johnny Cakes in my research, but the Shawnee cake made a lot of sense to me with the Native Americans. So that is the background that I found, very short, brief background. But my grandmother, as far as I can remember, I did not.

05:15
confirm this with my mom. I probably should have done that before I did this episode. My grandmother, I don't believe used cornmeal in hers. It was basically like a biscuit dough that was fried in butter in large discs. So she would use a cast iron pan as far as I can remember. She might not have used cast iron, but I use cast iron when I'm making them. We use cast iron basically for anything.

05:44
I'm going to give you my biscuit recipe on here so that you can copy this. You can do this for yourself at home. If you're driving or working right now, you don't have to write this down. I will put this recipe in the show notes so that you'll have them. My biscuit recipe, my favorite biscuit recipe, I use several, but my favorite one is one that I actually got from Adam's grandmother.

06:13
and it is three cups of flour and this is like all-purpose flour, two teaspoons baking powder, one teaspoon salt, one-fourth teaspoon baking soda, and then you will mix all this together and then you will add in lard and I usually I can't tell you how much lard I put in it.

06:40
she didn't give us a specific amount of lard or buttermilk to put in it but i usually i would say probably about two tablespoon-ish maybe of lard i know people that love measurements hate my recipes because i really don't like to give specific measurements because that's not how i bake i usually don't bake by recipes or um cook by recipes i usually just kind of wing it

07:09
and I know that makes a lot of people cringe probably but lard you'll add the lard in and I use my hands just to Mix the lard in it'll make like little tiny beads of lard in your mix And then once that's really incorporated into your flour and it's broken up Into really small little balls of lard throughout your your dough, then you'll add your buttermilk now

07:40
A lot of people will know that if they don't have buttermilk on hand, that you can make your own buttermilk, which is generally what I do because I don't buy buttermilk. I usually don't make buttermilk with our, with our milk. Um, I probably should honestly, but I just, that's just not something I'm in the practice of doing. So you can make your own buttermilk by putting, uh, just getting your milk in a, I look, I usually use like a little glass, uh,

08:08
measuring cup and I'll put like a cup of milk in it and then I will add a couple of teaspoons of white vinegar in it and you'll just let that sit on the counter and sour for you know while you're mixing your your other ingredients together so I usually start with that if I know I'm going to use buttermilk I'll just go ahead and start with that and get that going

08:35
and you'll be able to tell, you know, even after five minutes, that it's already kind of started to thicken and clobber a little bit. And that's when you know it's ready. So I'll pour my buttermilk in. You can pour it in slowly, like not use all of it, just so you can make sure that you don't add too much. But really, to me, biscuit making is more about a feel than it is about a recipe. So it just takes practice. I know my my.

09:03
youngest daughter is in the kitchen right now as we speak making some hot chocolate for herself and she was asking me about a recipe and I'm like honey I don't have a recipe like I just throw these things together and then I'll add a little bit more cocoa if it needs more cocoa I'll add a little bit more vanilla if it you know and she's like I just don't want to mess up and I'm like that is what cooking is all about it's about trial and error it's about figuring out how to do it without

09:31
you know having to be so specific I think about a recipe but just seeing what things look like, the texture of things, how they feel, how they look, you know, how it smells, how it tastes, everything. So I think it's just it's such a a cool experience to be able to to cook like that and you're going to have fails. I mean for sure you're going to have fails. I have had countless fails in my kitchen but but it's fun. I think it's fun to experiment.

10:01
and not be tied down to a recipe. So that is my biscuit recipe. You get it to the biscuit consistency that you feel like it should be. I think biscuits should be not watery, not runny, not hard. It should be very kind of a light and fluffy dough, if that makes sense to you.

10:30
And then what I'll do is I'll divide my dough into two balls and I will get my cast iron pan. I use about a eight to nine inch, I don't know if it's eight or nine inch that I usually use cast iron pan. And I will get it hot. Usually I'll put it, we have an induction top, cooktop, and I'll do it to about level eight to heat it up and I'll put butter. I would say probably about two

10:59
tablespoons of butter in there and get that good and hot get it get all the butter melted and Then I will flatten one of my balls out into a round disk. That's about the size of my cast iron pan you don't want to work your biscuit dough too much because if you as a lot of biscuit makers will Be able to agree with me about that. You don't want to work your dough too much Because it will make your biscuits not turn out

11:29
light and fluffy. So you just make it a disc as best you can. I don't usually roll mine out. I'll just pat it out with my hands and then you'll place it in your hot pan with your butter. And then I will usually if my disc is not the size of my pan yet then I will go ahead while I put right after you put it in the pan I will go ahead and pat it out just a little bit more so that it

11:58
I think it's really important for hoe cake, at least our version of hoe cake, to reach the edges of your cast iron pan so that you are getting that butter all on the edges of your of your disk. That is my favorite part of hoe cake are the edges because they get the most butter. And it just helps it to cook better that way. So get it all smoothed out there and then you will just let it fry in that butter.

12:28
you'll see it rise just like you'll see you know biscuits rise in the oven. After a few minutes I would just look and see if the bottom of your hoe cake has browned and if it has and you like the way it looks then flip it over. If you need more butter in your pan go ahead now and put some butter in your pan so that it can fry that other side really really well and buttery.

12:56
The whole cake is delicious, y'all. The more butter, the better, in my opinion. And then you'll fry the other side once you like the look of it and you don't think that the center of your whole cake is doughy anymore. Sometimes if I'm a little questioning it or if I didn't get the pan hot enough when I started or whatnot, then I'll just take a little peek.

13:21
in the middle of it just to make sure that it's not doughy in the middle. And there have been times where I've made hoe cake and it is still doughy in the middle because maybe I've gotten my pan too hot and it has burned the outside of it and I flipped it, burned the other outside of it, and I'm like oh my gosh it hasn't even cooked that long, you know? And it's still doughy in the middle. I just had it too hot. So you know just experiment with it see what you think.

13:45
You will not be sorry if you master a hoe cake recipe you will be wanting to make hoe cake a lot Hoe cake is something that my grandmother made very regularly For us and I just remember it so fondly in her kitchen She made biscuits a lot. She made rolls a lot. She made a lot of bread we grew up on a lot of bread and but

14:13
Ho cake was one of those things that was just different. It was what, you know, I didn't get that at anyone else's house. I don't ever remember going to anyone else's house or grandmother's house and getting ho cake. So I felt like it was something that was very unique to my grandmother. And like I said, most of the recipes that I found online at a corn meal, I don't believe she did because once I started making ho cake like this with my biscuit recipe, from what I remember, this is what my grandmother's tasted like. Any of my

14:43
family members that are listening to this might correct me on this and that is totally fine because I would love to know what the You know what my grandmother's specific recipe is but I believe this tastes very close to how she made it but Sometimes in the mornings if we don't have any bread. I make sourdough bread Basically every day, but there are some days that just get busy. I don't get it done

15:09
and we don't have any bread for breakfast. A lot of times we don't cook breakfast, at least recently, I haven't been cooking a lot of breakfast. But if I do and I know we need a bread and I don't wanna go to the trouble of cutting biscuits, then I will make this, I will make hoe cake. I will make the biscuit recipe, which is easy. And then I will.

15:33
just make them into two discs instead of cutting out all the biscuits and putting them on the pan and getting the oven hot, you know, all that stuff. So I love hoe cake, if you can't tell already. I think it is a really unique thing and it's an easy thing to do for your family. And it's just delicious, especially if you're using some good quality butter. We use our butter, our raw butter that we make on the farm here. And

16:03
It's just so good. It's just so good. So I encourage you to give it a try. Like I said, if you did not write down my biscuit recipe, you can see that in the show notes on our website biscuitsandgravypodcast.com and I will also put in some pictures of hoe cake in the show notes as well so you can see that. All right, that is all for today's

16:33
hopefully next week. Yes, I think it will be next week. We will be talking about a place in Southern Pines that Adam and I went for our anniversary dinner called Chef Warren's and it was a lovely experience and I can't wait to tell you all about it next time. So I will see you guys later. Thank you so much for listening. I have been getting so many sweet notes and feedback online.

16:58
just messages and comments on pictures and things on Instagram. And it really encourages me just to keep going and keep recording these episodes because several of you enjoy it. So I appreciate that and I appreciate you listening and supporting this little fun venture of mine. And I hope to continue doing more for you. I will talk to you guys soon, bye.