The figure is up 5.5% on last year and some 9.2% than for the year ending September 2010, which coincidentally is the year that BBC favourite The Great British Bake Off started

The top five sweet bakery and dessert goodies - cakes, croissants, cookies, brownies and muffins - account for more than one billion of the 1.5 billion servings.

Muriel Illig, foodservice account manager, said: “Has the Great British Bake Off stimulated our appetite for these treats? Yes, the figures show that when it comes to servings of the Top Five sweet bakery and dessert favourites it’s very much a case of the Great British Bakery and Dessert Take-Off. With another Bake-Off series next summer, we’ll once again watch tasty bakes come to life – and many more of us will be tempted by these goodies.”

Since the year ending September 2010, annual servings of cakes are up 9.6% and it’s a similar story for croissants (up 21%), cookies (up 18%), brownies (up 72%) and muffins (up 27%).

However, the demand has not translated to the high-street bakery outlets, as the market only grew by 2.5% in the five year period. Bakeries even faced a 3.1% decline in servings in the year ending September 2015.

High street coffee shops are however performing well in the market, serving 186 million sweet treats in the same year-long period.