Selection Box Christmas Cake

The perfect answer to traditional fruit cake, this no-bake Selection Box cake is every child's dream (and a few adults, too, come to that!). When it comes to the toppings there are no rules, apart from choose your favorites! Underneath the sweet treats is a delicious dark layer of biscuit-y, chocolate-y tiffin encircled with Cadbury Chocolate fingers. It really is the most wonderful cake of the year! 

Merry Christmas! 

Equipment 

Tala Indigo and Ivory enameled steel roaster 

large saucepan 

Measuring spoons 

Wooden spoon 

Chopping board 

Sharp knife 

Potato masher 

Small mixing bowl 

Mini palette knife 

Ingredients 

For the tiffin: 

250g butter 

3 tbs golden syrup 

4.5 tbs cocoa powder 

4.5 tbs soft light brown sugar 

100g dark chocolate 

200g milk chocolate 

300g digestive biscuits 

154g package Oreos 

For the decoration: 

3 x 114g boxes Cadbury Dairy Milk Fingers 

3 x 26g Curly Wurly bars 

1 x 40g bag Cadbury Dairy Milk Buttons 

1 x 52g tube Rolo 

3 x 38g tubes Smarties 

1 x 51g Reese's 3 Peanut Butter Cups 

2 x 50g Twix bars 

1 x 104g pouch KitKat Bites 

1 x 102g pouch Aero Peppermint Bubbles 

1 x 100g box Maltesers 

1. Place 225g of the butter (keeping 25g and the wrapper for later), golden syrup, soft light brown sugar and cocoa into the saucepan and heat gently until the butter melts. Break the dark chocolate into pieces and stir into the mixture. Turn off the heat when it has fully melted. 
2. Roughly chop the digestive biscuits and the Oreos, ensuring that you have a gloriously uneven mixture of fine and large biscuit crumbs and pieces (this is not the time for perfectly evenly chopped pieces!) and stir into the mixture until all of the biscuit pieces are coated in wonderful chocolate-y gooiness. 
3. Grease the roaster with the butter wrapper, then transfer the chocolate mixture to the roaster and spread out so that it completely covers the bottom. Use a potato masher to bash and flatten the mixture into place, so that it is roughly flat and evenly distributed. 
4. Place the rest of the butter and the milk chocolate (broken into pieces) into the small mixing bowl and melt gently in the microwave or over a bain marie. Mix thoroughly and then spread evenly over the tiffin in the roaster with the mini palette knife. 
5. Cut the chocolate fingers in half and line the edges of the tin with them as shown in the picture. (Important: you won't need all of chocolate fingers, so start by cutting up two boxes and then you can chop one or two at a time until you have finished lining the tin). 
6. Now comes the fun part! Using the Curly Wurlys as dividing panels, arrange your most favourite sweets and chocolates on top of the cake. You do not have to follow my arrangement but do make sure you have enough to cover the top of the cake – there is nothing more disappointing than a selection box with missing items! 

As long as the cake is covered, it will be fine at room temperature for a couple of days but if you can spare precious fridge space at this time of year, it would really be best to store it in the fridge.