Gluten-Free Roasted Dock Seed Brownie Bites

Here is another absolutely delicious baking recipe for wild foraged ingredients: Gluten-free Roasted Dock Seed Brownie Bites. These are really, really good; seriously, I am in complete awe with how delectable these dock seed brownie bites are. My extremely picky son even rates them 8 of 10. That right there says A LOT! This recipe only makes 6 cupcake sized brownie bites so double the recipe if you only have a 12-cup muffin tin. For me, six muffins are the perfect amount to make when you are unsure of how your finished product will turn out or what it will taste like. Thankfully, after a lot of effort, they turned out wonderfully.

Rumex crispus is commonly known as curly dock but it is also known as yellow dock. Don’t let the word “yellow” fool you because the seed and flour from this plant are red; it is actually only the root that is yellow. Curly dock is native to Europe and Western Asia, but it is considered to be an invasive weed in the United States.

The plant sends up stalks of dark red seeds in the late summer or early fall. The seeds will remain on the stalk until early spring, making this an excellent plant to forage when others are unavailable. You may even see the long stalks poking out of snow in the winter. It really is quite striking to view in a field.

Curly dock is a member of the buckwheat family. Buckwheat, and other members of this family, do not contain gluten despite having “wheat” in the name. In fact, neither buckwheat nor curly dock are grains, but rather they are seeds.

Foraging for Dock Seeds and Making Roasted Dock Flour

To make this recipe you will first have to forage the seeds and make your flour. When foraging you need to remember to share with the animals. We left one stalk on each plant for our animal friends, but if your goal is to eradicate curly dock by preventing seeding, then feel free to take it all.

After you have gathered your stalks, you need to separate the seeds from the stalk. Simply run your fingers down the stalk letting the seeds fall into a large bowl.

The next step is toasting the seeds- but be warned that it is very easy to burn them. Place your seeds single layer on a cookie sheet and toast for 3 minutes. I have a countertop toaster oven and used the toaster setting. I toasted my first batch for too long and they started smoking. I burned my second batch as well at toasting for four minutes. Three minutes seemed to be enough time to dry them enough to allow for easy grinding and to bring out their deep flavor.

I am just going to add another little bit of warning: dock seeds do not smell that great while being toasted or when using a grinder. Actually, they smell a little like burnt rubber. My daughter started grinding the flour in a coffee grinder, and I thought that she burnt out the motor. The motor ended up being fine, it was just the smell of the dock seeds. Do not let the smell throw you off at this stage, it has NOTHING to do with the final flavor of these roasted dock flour brownie bites.

To grind your toasted seeds, you first need to make sure they are fully cool. Grinding creates heat and if you grind a hot product you may end up with too much heat. You can use a grain mill, coffee grinder, or the dry attachment of a Vitamix or another strong blender. Remember: that smell is in no way indicative of the final product.

Making the Toasted Dock Seed Brownie Bites

Homesteading Confessions

I believe in truth in advertising: it is easy to get overwhelmed with the thought of projects such as making your dock flour from foraged seeds and baking brownies. What you see on this page, condensed into one easy to read recipe, was a project that took place during a two-month time span.

First, I had the idea that I wanted to make dock seed brownies. I was scanning Pinterest and found a post about using dock seed. It took about two weeks of wanting to harvest the dock before I finally sent my daughter out to do it for me. She loves foraging so she happily did that. I then had a large grocery bag of dock in my kitchen for probably a couple of weeks. The bag started to get in the way and finally I decided to toast the seeds. I burnt two batches. I threw out the burnt seeds and let the successfully toasted seeds cool. I placed them in a bowl, my favorite mixing bowl actually, and put them on the counter which is where they stayed until I really needed my mixing bowl. Once the flour was ground, it got stored in a cupboard for weeks until I decided to make brownie bites.

Why am I telling you this? Because I know how little time many people have. I do not want to leave anyone with the impression that I have whole days free to work on projects like this. I did little by little as I had time. If you have a day to spend only foraging, making wild dock flour and brownies then that is wonderful! I usually do not and I wanted to be very clear the amount of time that elapsed from start to finish for this project. Many of my projects are done exactly this way, step by step and day by day.

Thank you for reading and enjoy! If you find these articles helpful and would like to help contribute to Mossygoat Farm, please consider buying me a coffee (or contributing to fixing my septic).