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01-05-2025
SYDNEY: Two cookbook authors have accused TikTok influencer Brooke Bellamy of copying their recipes.
Nagi Maehashi, the Australian founder of popular food website RecipeTin Eats, said Ms Bellamy’s cookbook contains recipes with “word-for-word similarities to mine”.
Bellamy, who owns the popular Brooki Bakehouse, has rejected her allegations, saying her book contains “100 recipes I have created over many years”. One of those in question was created before Ms Maehashi published hers, she claims.
Hours after Maehashi’s raised her allegations, US author Sally McKenney also accused Bellamy of plagiarizing her vanilla cake recipe.
Maehashi said that a reader pointed out what she described as “remarkable similarities” between her caramel slice recipe and the one in Bellamy’s best-selling cookbook bake with Brooki.
She said she later also discovered similarities between her baklava recipe and Bellamy’s, offering a side-by-side comparison in a statement on RecipeTin Eats.
Maehashi is the author of two cookbooks and her website, which she started in 2014, attracts a monthly readership of 45 million page views.
Bellamy is the owner of three Brooki Bakehouse branches, all in Queensland, which were set up in 2022. She is also a popular baker on TikTok with two million followers.
Maehashi said she had contacted Bellamy’s publisher, Penguin Random House Australia, adding that they “brought in lawyers and resorted to what felt to me legal intimidation”.
“It feels like a blatant exploitation of my work. To see them plagiarized and used in a book for profit, without permission, and without credit, doesn’t just feel unfair,” she added.
Maehashi has retained her own legal counsel and has written to both Bellamy and Penguin.
Bake with Brooki was published in October 2024 and has since sold AU$4.6m (£2.1m; $2.9) worth of copies.
Penguin and Bellamy have both strenuously denied the accusations, with the publisher issuing a response to Maehashi confirming “the recipes in the BWB Book were written by Brooke Bellamy”.
Despite maintaining no wrongdoing, Bellamy said she offered to take down the recipes from future reprints “to prevent further aggravation” and that this was communicated “swiftly” to Maehashi.
She added that she had “great respect for Nagi” but has stood by her recipes in a series of Instagram stories.
“Recipe development in today’s world is enveloped in inspiration from other cooks, cookbook authors, food bloggers and content creators,” she said, adding that the “willingness to share recipes” is what she loves about baking.
Both Maehashi’s and Bellamy’s cookbooks have been shortlisted for this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards.
McKenney, who authors the website Sally’s Baking Addiction, accused Bellamy of copying her vanilla cake recipe, which is included in Bellamy’s cookbook and YouTube channel.
“Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit especially in a best-selling cookbook,” McKenny wrote on Instagram.
Nagi is a national treasure. She gives all her recipes away for free online (and they’e great recipes with detailed explanations and instructions, with no irritating carry on about “food journeys” or spammy pop ups) and tips a lot of money into a foodbank she runs. (Int’l News Desk)
