Well, I've never done it, so this is all guesswork, but I would assume that you hold the handle upright, so that the hoe itself itself is parallel to the fire. But this is all theoretical Sjoerd. Why don't you try it, take a bunch of pictures, and report back?
The hoe is heated red-hot over the fire, a thin layer of the batter is placed on the hot hoe which bakes the batter, and there you have it--a hoe cake! After posting this no one is going to want to come have dinner at my house .
First of all,, lets get this straight,,there is no bad cornbread. Only some that is better than others. I can make quite good scratch cornbread but I admit that I cheat and usually use the pre packaged mix. It has the same ingredients that I use and comes pre measured. I also add an extra egg to 1 1/2 packets and a little extra milk. It makes a lighter cornbread. I make the dense one for dressing since it will soak up more of the chicken broth.
First of all,, lets get this straight,,there is no bad cornbread. Only some that is better than others. Mart, you never had my mother's cornbread. We could have built an adobe house with it, or paved the path to the tool shed. The pre-packaged mix would have been a true blessing in our household. I've used the mix also, with good results. I just usually have the ingredients on hand and don't have the mix when the cornbread baking mania hits!
Well Mart and Marling, I can tell you that I have never eaten cornbread that I haven't enjoyed. Having said that I can say that I haven't eaten all that much. My bride is swept away with it and makes it from time to time with boxes of mix that you cab buy in the import store in the airport. When we lived and worked over there, we would sometimes travel to the South and there we could find it. We went to a place in several cities called "the Crackerbarrel". They specialized in a home-cooked style of food. They had good cornbread, as I recall....or was it biscuits. I usually had the chicken and dumplings dinner with veggies including collard or turnip greens and then cherry or apple cobbler. Boring I know, but I absolutely LURVED it. I think that you two ladies ought to make cornbread to sell. When you write about it, it brings back memories. If you guys had an online bakery, I would order it right away. I reckon that hoecakes would be oké to eat as well.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the term hoecake first occurs in 1745. The origin of the name is the method of preparation: they were cooked on a type of iron pan called a hoe. It's like a small round side-less cast iron pan. Crackerbarrel restaurants still exist, there are two not far from me. They are okay but every one has their own version of the down-home recipes.
Toni, that sound like my first attempt at making white bread many moons ago. I could have built a house with it. When I tossed it out in the yard and the dog looked, smelled and then gave me the "are you kidding" look,,I knew it was bad. Sjoerd,, no way is that boring. That how we ate daily during my growing up years. My grandmother cooked a huge breakfast and mid day meal but dinner was what ever was left over or scrounged. When I got home from school my afternoon snack was a chunk of cornbread, two or three green onions and fried salt pork left from breakfast. Does that say I am a southern country girl or what ?
