Hoecakes
by: AUNT CILE from Jeannette Flynn
I used to make the hoe cakes the way Aunt Cile told me was her "way." She had no recipe. Aunt Cile used self-rising corn meal. If you don't have self-rising flour in the house and are "snowed in," you can look at the cornbread recipe on the conrbread box and add the amount of baking power and/or soda. She did not add any flour. She added water or milk until the batter was a consistency of pancake batter. (She never gave me a ratio of a cup of this and a half cup of that!) She poured vegetable oil into a cast iron skilllet to coat the bottom and let it get hot, again about the same as for pancakes only a little more oil than for pancakes. Then drop the batter by tablespoonfuls into the hot oil. (The reason for using more oil is that no oil is mixed into the batter as you would if you were baking cornbread. So, the oil absorbs into the cornbread batter as it is frying.) Watch carefully for the bottom to brown and edges to crisp and then flip and do the same on the other side. You may have to keep adding a little oil as you put more hoe cakes in to cook. The hoe cakes are smaller in diameter than most pancakes about 3.5 ". Aunt Cile's hoe cakes were SO GOOD that I would eat them cold out of the refrigerator the next morning in the decades ago before microwaves!!! Have fun..... Let us know if you can work out a receipe we call all write down.