Hotcakes is singer-songwriter Carly Simon's fourth studio album. Released in 1974, it became one of her biggest selling albums. The album featured the major hits "Mockingbird", a duet with her then-husband James Taylor (a cover of a 1963 hit for Inez and Charlie Foxx), and "Haven't Got Time for the Pain". Recorded during her pregnancy with her first child, many of the album's songs reflected Simon's upbeat mood during this period. The album's cover photo, taken by Ed Caraeff, shows the pregnant Simon sitting in a gleamingly white kitchen, smiling brightly and wearing a bohemian white linen dress.

The album went gold immediately and it stayed on the charts for eight months, yet it was initially overshadowed commercially by two other major albums released by Simon's own label, Elektra/Asylum, in the same month as Hotcakes, Joni Mitchell's Court and Spark and Bob Dylan's Planet Waves. These took the #2 and #1 spots, respectively, on the Billboard album chart while Hotcakes peaked at #3.Hotcakes went on to sell several hundred thousand more copies than Dylan's album and was listed in the Top 40 of Billboard's Year End Top albums for 1974, while Planet Waves did not make the Top 50.

Jon Landau, writing in Rolling Stone, stated Simon's ..."Hotcakes is playful-sounding with some serious overtones — a balance that best suits her for the time being." He also stated that "'Think I'm Gonna Have a Baby,' 'Forever My Love' and especially 'Haven't Got Time for the Pain' are substantial songs and performances, superior to almost everything else she has so far recorded."

William Ruhlmann's more recent review for Allmusic rated the album four out of five stars. Ruhlmann wrote, Hotcakes was "an autobiographical concept album that defined domestic bliss at a time when Simon's listeners also were catching their breath and turning inward." Shortly after its release, Hotcakes was certified Gold by the RIAA, for sales "of one million dollars at manufacturer's level" in the United States. David Geffen, then-president of Elektra/Asylum, was quoted in a 1974 Rolling Stone article that Hotcakes had sold 1 million units in the US up to that point.

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