Chocolate Biscuit Cake - festive additions

[Confusedandshaken]

Last year I made a chocolate biscuit cake instead of a Christmas cake and it went down very well with our various guests. I thought I'd do it again this year but make a few smaller ones and drop them round to the people who we would normally see over the Christmas period. 🥲

Does anyone have any recipes or suggestions for things I can add or do to make it extra festive and delicious? So far I've got pecans and sultanas as well as biscuits, butter and chocolate. They will all be nice but I want it to be extra special this year.

Also any ideas to decorate it? I thought of some gold leaf but any other ideas would be gratefully received.

Nadiya did one on tv last night that had sour cherries in. Maybe dried cranberries?? Marshmallows? Use big ones. Freeze them first or they melt.

Crystallised stem ginger?

Glacé cherries or marrons glacé. Chunks of marzipan. Speculaas. Candied peel. Gingerbread.

Delia has a lovely recipe for a ‘posh’ version. You could swap the cherries for cranberries.

www.deliaonline.com/recipes/international/european/french/chocolate-crunch-torte-with-pistachios-and-sour-cherries

If you have any little pudding basins you could make them look like Christmas puddings with a little bit of white icing and fondant Holly and berries on the top!

I make Christmas chocolate biscuit cake every year.

Include ginger nuts and leibkuchen biscuits in the biscuit mix. If you want an extra tone of posh, then you can even include amaretti biscuits too. Add a generous amount of cinnamon into the chocolate sauce. Cranberries and candied citrus peel for the fruit.

Thanks everyone. Soaking the sultanas in rum is a great idea. As is using hobnobs instead of digestives. I will also add the cherries because they will look so pretty.

I’ll be googling chocolate biscuit cake in a minute but sometimes with ordinary chocolate cake I leave out some flour and substitute with hazelnut meal. That’s really lovely.