RecipeTin Eats founder accuses Brooki Bakehouse of plagiarising recipes
Brooke Bellamy rejects claims by popular Australian cook Nagi Maehashi that two recipes in the cookbook Bake with Brooki are copied.
Social media influencer Brooke Bellamy has rejected claims from bestselling Australian cookbook author Nagi Maehashi that she plagiarised two of her recipes.
In a statement on her website RecipeTin Eats on Tuesday afternoon, Maehashi said two recipes in Bellamy's bestselling cookbook Bake with Brooki were uncannily similar to recipes she had previously published.
These were recipes for caramel slice and baklava, with Maehashi posting side-by-side screenshots of the ingredients, quantities and instructions from the two books.
Nagi Maehashi has raised concerns about two recipes in the Bake with Brooki cookbook.
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She said the similarities between the recipes amounted to plagiarism but that lawyers for Penguin Random House Australia, which published Bellamy's book, had rejected her claim and said all recipes were written by Bellamy.
"Profiting from plagiarised recipes is unethical — even if it is not copyright infringement — and undermines the integrity of the entire book," she said.
"And it's a slap in the face to every author who puts in the hard work to create original content rather than cutting corners."
Bellamy refutes allegations
In a statement posted on her Instagram account, Bellamy, known as Brooki Bakehouse on social media, said she "did not plagiarise any recipes".
"My book … consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years, since falling in love with baking as a child and growing up baking with my mum in our home kitchen," she said.
Bellamy said she had been creating her recipes and selling them commercially since October 2016.
Brooke Bellamy has rejected Nagi Maehashi's allegations.
"On March 2020, RecipeTin Eats published a recipe for caramel slice," she said in her post.
"It uses the same ingredients as my recipe, which I have been making and selling since four years prior."
Bellamy said that after Maehashi contacted her about the allegations, she immediately offered to remove both the caramel slice and baklava recipes from future reprints of her cookbook to "prevent further aggravation".
"[This] was communicated to Nagi swiftly through discussions," she said.
Claims recipes had 'remarkable similarities'
Maehashi is the founder of popular website RecipeTin Eats, which has been viewed more than 500 million times, and the author of award-winning cookbooks Dinner and Tonight.
A popular social media personality, Bellamy boasts a combined 3 million followers on TikTok and Instagram, and has opened three cookie shops in Brisbane.
Her cookbook Bake with Brooki, released in October 2024, is shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards alongside Maehashi's book Tonight.
Nagi Maehashi says the caramel slice recipe in Bake with Brooki (right) is similar to her own (left).
RecipeTin Eats
In her post, Maehashi said her suspicions began in November last year when a reader alerted her to "remarkable similarities" between her caramel slice recipe and a version in newly released Bake with Brooki.
"Seeing what appeared to me to be one of my recipes printed in a book launched with a huge publicity campaign from one of Australia's biggest publishers was shocking," she said.
While Maehashi acknowledged there can be a resemblance between recipes, she said the "precision and detail" in the similarities were "far too strong" to be a coincidence.
She said her caramel slice recipe was special because it used caramel as the base rather than commonly used golden syrup.
Maehashi also said while she sometimes sourced recipes from other authors, she always tested them "extensively", credited them and rewrote them in her own words.
'Penguin brought in lawyers'
Maehashi said she wrote to Penguin immediately.
"Disappointingly, instead of engaging in civil discussions with me, Penguin brought in lawyers," she said.
She said their response included "pages of legal jargon that [she] struggled to make sense of".
Maehashi said she had engaged her own legal representation.
A screenshot from Recipe_Tin post in which the founder accuses Brooki Bakehouse of plagiarising recipes.
@recipe_tin
In her Instagram post, Bellamy said she had "great respect for Nagi".
"Recipe development in today's world is enveloped in inspiration from other cooks, cookbook authors, food bloggers and content creators," she said.
"This willingness to share recipes and build on what has come before is what I love so much about baking and sharing recipes — the community that surrounds it."
The ABC has contacted Penguin Random House Australia and Maehashi for comment.
