CRUMBS! When it comes to celebrations a Bolton bakery expert reckons that Halloween could be taking over from Christmas for Boltonians.

Sandra Ogden, head of retail and marketing operations for Greenhalgh’s Craft Bakery in Lostock, said: “We’ve found that Halloween has been getting bigger by the year with our special ranges of cakes and toffee selling really well.

“It’s now one of the two major celebrations for us along with Christmas — and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it didn’t get bigger than Christmas in this way.”

The famous family bakery has 62 shops around the North West and also supplies major supermarkets.

It boasts 16 dedicated items for Halloween and Bonfire Night, selling them from the start of September to November 5.

And they manufacture about 8,000 to 10,000 a week of each of the Halloween lines.

The current range includes parkin buns and luxury treacle toffee muffins as well as a sticky parkin loaf, parkin treacle tart and bags of treacle toffee.

The traditional Halloween figures of skeletons, spiders, ghosts, pumpkins, monsters and eyeballs figure in biscuits, cupcakes and buns.

There’s a spooky skeleton chocolate cake and a gingerbread dog, Scary Doo, as well as a smiley gingerbread witch.

Mrs Ogden added: “Obviously, children are attracted to the scary and novelty type items whereas older customers still favour the more traditional products such as the parkin loaf and muffins.