FOUR kind-hearted youngsters held a three-hour bake sale in the cold, raising £132.68 for Cancer Research UK in the process.

The Haddington youngsters – Amie Diggins, eight; her brother Lewis, five; Lilly Dannaher, 10; and Ava Johnson, also 10 – spent time planning the products, ingredients needed and how much they would charge, before enlisting the help of their parents and grandparents to produce the baked goods.

Amie and Lewis’s mum Jen said: “Amie and her friends had been going on about it for a couple of weeks, saying ‘We’re going to do a bake sale’, but as you do when they’re that age you just say, ‘Aha, yeah’, and you just brush it off!”

But when the entrepreneurial youngsters revealed their plans and the fact they would donate the money they made to charity, Jen realised they were serious.

She posted their plans on social media, inviting neighbours to stop by the children’s stall at their home on Arthurs Way on January 30, never expecting the incredible response.

She told the Courier: “We sold everything – to people passing in cars, people who were out on walks… I was expecting to make maybe £30-40 but more than £130 later, it was just amazing.”

And the Haddington Primary School pupils were not fazed by the cold temperatures either.

Jen said: “They were out there at 10 o’clock in the morning setting up.

“They started at about noon, and they kept going till about 3 o’clock in the afternoon.”

The children stocked their stall with homemade shortbread, chocolate cake, cake pops, caramel shortbread, jam biscuits and cupcakes, and also juice and sparkling water.

And their entrepreneurial spirit kicked in with the price list they created.

Jen said: “They were selling slabs of chocolate cake for £3 each and I said to them ‘that’s maybe a bit expensive’, so they changed it to a pound.”

The generous children chose Cancer Research UK to benefit from their sales, Jen said, because both Amie and Lilly’s grandmothers had had cancer.

Because of this, she added, neighbours and passers-by were happy to buy the cakes and biscuits.

“But not everybody bought something,” she said, “they were just coming up saying, ‘I think it’s a great thing you’re doing’ and just handing them a donation, which was brilliant.”

And when the children counted up their earnings at the end of the day, they were “ecstatic”.

Amie said: “It was really surprising, because I didn’t think we would make that much money. We were aiming for maybe £100 but not that much. When we were coming back from packing everything up, I just said to my friends: ‘I’m really proud of all of us.’”

Lisa Adams, Cancer Research UK spokeswoman in Scotland, said: “With around 32,200 people diagnosed with cancer every year in Scotland, we’re working every day to find new ways to prevent, diagnose and treat the disease.

“We’d like to thank everyone who supports us. Money raised allows Cancer Research UK’s doctors, nurses and scientists to advance research which is helping to save the lives of men, women and children across Scotland. One in two people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer at some point in their lives but the good news is that more people are surviving the disease now than ever before. Survival rates have doubled since the 1970s but more funds and more supporters are needed to bring forward the day when all cancers are cured.”