KEY POINTS:
Kim McCosker and Rachael Bermingham can bake a delicious fruit cake using only mixed fruit, juice, sherry and flour.
And a chicken pie with only puff pastry, canned soup, frozen vegetables and chicken.
Or an easy roast beef with gravy by adding only french onion soup mix and a can cream of mushroom soup to the meat.
The Australian pair have converted their knack for making meals with four ingredients or fewer into a recipe for success.
"We assume that you have salt, pepper and water. Everything else is an ingredient," said McCosker, who is mother to Hamilton, 2, and Morgan, 5.
Their book, 4 Ingredients, is a bestseller across the Tasman.
"We basically wrote a cookbook we wanted to read so everything had to be really simple, really easy and really delicious."
The idea for the book started when they became mothers. They had left their corporate careers - McCosker has a background in finance, Bermingham's is marketing - but wanted to continue working from home.
They had initially self-published 2000 copies in March, a first print run some had cautioned as too big. Seven months on, 175,000 copies of the book have been printed.
The response had been overwhelming, said Bermingham, who is mother of Jaxson, 5. The book had been written initially to target other time-stressed mums, but the biggest buyers online have been men.
The pair insist that they're not cooks. Instead, the recipes have been collected from family, friends and neighbours.
The pair had started with 70 recipes between them, all largely family recipes passed down through the generations. As word of their project went around, family members, neighbours and friends gave their contributions.
In the end they wound up with 700 recipes, which the pair kitchen-tested and whittled down to the 340 in the book.
All the recipes are attributed to the source, and now the pair are looking for some New Zealand contributions for the book's second edition.
