‘Yes, a tablespoon': Brooki Bakehouse owner Brooke Bellamy faces plagiarism claims over vanilla cake and other recipes
Plagiarism claims against a popular cooking queen over several sweet treats including a vanilla cake have sparked debate about how much ownership chefs and cooks have over recipes.
Two authors — RecipeTin Eats' Nagi Maehashi, from Australia, and American Sally McKenney, author and blogger behind Sally's Baking Addiction — have accused Brooke Bellamy of stealing recipes for her bestseller Bake With Brooki, which was published by Penguin in October.
Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today
The allegations relate to Maehashi's caramel slice and baklava, and McKenney's best vanilla cake recipe.
Bellamy, who owns the popular Brooki Bakehouse in Brisbane, and Penguin have denied the claims.
Maehashi argued McKenney's cake recipe had ingredients such as buttermilk, which made it identifiable as belonging to the American.
In her YouTube video, Bellamy refers to her cake as 'the best ever vanilla cake'.
The ingredients are minimally different. There is a 3g difference in the amount of flour used and 5g in butter measurements.
McKenney's also calls for three large eggs and two extra egg whites, while Bellamy's instead asks for four eggs.
McKenney's recipe also calls for 400g of granulated sugar, where as Bellamy's asks for a finer caster sugar, although the sugars can be substituted.
The ingredients are listed in a similar order and both recipes contain the same three-word note — 'Yes, a tablespoon!' — next to the measurement for vanilla extract.
'Nagi ... I'm so grateful you let me know months ago that one of my recipes — the best vanilla cake I've ever had, published by me in 2019 — was also plagiarised in this book and also appears on the author's YouTube channel,' McKenney said in an Instagram story.
'Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit — especially in a best-selling cookbook.'
Bellamy has publicly denied the claims she lifted recipes for her book, and shared a 2016 photo of the caramel slice she says predates Maehashi's.
'I have great respect for Nagi and what she has done in recent years for cooks, content creators and cookbooks in Australia — especially as a fellow female entrepreneur,' Bellamy said on social media.
'Recipe development in today's world is enveloped in inspiration from other cooks, cookbook authors, food bloggers and content creators.
'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 Brisbane baker said she has offered to remove both recipes flagged by Maehashi from future reprints to prevent further aggravation.
In a second statement on Wednesday, Bellamy said she does 'not copy other's people's recipes'.
'Like many bakers, I draw inspiration from the classics, but the creations you see at Brooki Bakehouse reflect my own experience, taste, and passion for baking, born of countless hours of my childhood spent in my home kitchen with Mum,' she said.
'While baking has leeway for creativity, much of it is a precise science and is necessarily formulaic.
'Many recipes are bound to share common steps and measures: if they don't, they simply don't work.'
Legal expert weighs in on baker battle
Legal experts say recipes are unlikely to be protected by copyright laws.
'There's quite a high hurdle to jump to show that a recipe has enough originality to allege copyright infringement,' Queensland University of Technology intellectual property expert Kylie Pappalardo told 7NEWS.
'Copyright is an area where these things come up all the time. There's always singers or somebody alleging someone has copied something from somebody else.
'There is copyright in creative expression, but not in facts, data, etc.'
The situation is complicated because the allegedly stolen recipes — caramel slice, baklava, and vanilla cake — are fairly common baked goods where there is little room for creativity, Pappalardo said.
'At the end of the day, there's probably only so many variations you could have that would still work and taste good,' she said.
'That is why I say that copyright is very thin, if it exists at all in these recipes.'
Stream free on
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Perth Now
23 minutes ago
- Perth Now
Conner Smith knocks down pedestrian in fatal accident
Conner Smith was involved in a fatal accident on Sunday (08.06.25). The 24-year-old country singer is at the centre of an investigation by police in Nashville after his pickup truck struck Dorothy Dobbins, 77, who appeared to be walking inside a marked crosswalk at the time. She was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center but tragically passed away shortly afterwards. According to the Metropolitan Nashville Police Department, Conner showed "no signs of impairment" but the preliminary contributing factor to the fatal accident was the I Hate Alabama singer's failure to give the pedestrian the right of way. No charges have been filed in the case. Conner has sent his condolences to Dorothy's family. His attorney, Worrick G. Robinson, told E! News: 'On June 8th, Mr. Smith was involved in a car accident that tragically claimed a life. "His heart goes out to Ms. Dobbins' family during this incredibly difficult time. 'Mr. Smith continues to cooperate fully with the ongoing investigation.' Earlier in the weekend, Conner had performed at the CMA Fest in Nashville, and the singer - who married Leah Thompson last year - admitted getting on stage was a career highlight because of his fond memories of attending the event in previous years. He told American Songwriter: 'I just remember coming down here and watching people on that stage and dreaming about it, and looking up to the guys on that stage. "And then when you get to be up there and see people come in and pack out that lawn for you, it feels really cool.' And having his family in attendance made the concert even more special. He added: 'We always have family and friends out here as well. [It was] a really special moment.' Conner shot to fame with his viral single I Hate Alabama in 2021 and he released his debut album, Smoky Mountains, last year.
Perth Now
6 hours ago
- Perth Now
The Perth YouTuber telling WA stories you've never heard of
A Perth YouTuber is growing a strong following online with his videos dedicated to exploring WA's surprising, quirky and forgotten history. Brendan, behind Brendan's Odyssey, produces original videos uncovering abandoned sites, once popular but now dilapidated WA attractions and unknown facts about the State. He started the account two years ago but things really picked up for the local creator when he made a video on the Perth Entertainment Centre, which has accumulated more than 120,000 views and counting since 2024. 'I sort of just got lucky with the algorithm, I released two videos around the same time that both blew up,' Brendan said. 'One was about the remains of the tram network that used to be around Perth and also a video about the Perth Entertainment Centre. Brendan said his list of story ideas is constantly growing. Credit: @brendansodyssey. 'Those two videos sort of took off and that really helped build an audience.' It can take Brendan weeks to make a video from start to finish since he works full time and uses his weekends for researching, urban exploring, filming and editing, although he typically works on a few projects at a time. He launched his YouTube channel after seeing adventure and history creators around the world making fascinating content, which inspired him to point the lens at WA's special sites and characters. 'There's a lot of untold (WA) stories out there, which a lot of them are only in text form,' Brendan said. 'I want to tell the stories, I feel like Perth gets forgotten a bit in the scheme of Australia, you know, we're pretty isolated from everyone else.' The local creator dedicates his free time to producing the videos. Credit: @brendansodyssey According to his statistics, most of Brendan's audience is from WA, which has led to many exciting story suggestions. One of those being his video, Was this the WORLD's smallest bank?, on an unusually tiny building that operated as a brand of the Agricultural Bank in Shackleton, which is about 200km east of Perth. He also received dozens of requests for a video on Atlantis Marine Park, an abandoned theme park in Two Rocks, which he explored the remains of. One of Brendan's favourite videos to make was on Carmel Mullally, who spent 50 years fending off attempts to buy her home, a workers cottage, in the Fremantle Port. 'When the whole harbour got redeveloped in the 1960s, she basically refused to leave,' Brendan said. 'Her entire street was demolished but she stayed there up until nearly her death in 2022. 'But her cottage still exists and has been heritage listed. 'She is definitely one of the cooler characters I've come across in a video.'
The Age
8 hours ago
- The Age
‘Height, weight, job, lifestyle': How a matchmaker's shopping list spawned a star-studded romcom
For about 10 years, Celine Song struggled to make a living in New York as a playwright. At one point, she realised she had better get a day job if she was going to pay her rent. The usual thing, she thought, was to make coffee or pull beers, but she soon discovered that a lot of other struggling artists had nabbed those hospo side-hustles before she got to town. 'To be a barista you need like 10 years of experience,' she says. 'To be a bartender you need 15 years.' It was then that someone at a party told her about matchmaking, which seemed to require no experience whatsoever. She applied to a dating agency; she got the job. She stayed just six months but, by the time she left, she knew she would one day write about it. Materialists is the second feature by the 36-year-old filmmaker; Past Lives (2023), which was nominated for two Oscars, including best film, also drew on an aspect of her own experience. Its heroine, Nora (Greta Lee), was a playwright, born in Korea but now living in New York and married to an American screenwriter (John Magaro). The pull of cultures within her comes to the surface when her primary school sweetheart (Teo Yoo), left behind when her family emigrated, finds her on social media. The film is a poignant meditation on missed chances and blocked choices. For many of us, it was the film of the year. Her new film, billed as a romcom, is a much starrier affair. Dakota Johnson plays Lucy the matchmaker, albeit one with many more runs on the board than Song achieved: nine marriages concluded, as she tells her agency colleagues with a simpering giggle. Lucy's winning MO is to become soulmate to her clients, who pay big bucks (anywhere from $US2000 to $US200,000 in real life, according to Google) for access to the right kind of prospect. The clients come with shopping lists. One man in his 40s insists he couldn't consider a woman over 25. Women stipulate that they're not considering anyone under six feet. At these prices, they want deluxe goods. Lucy herself is single. It is five years since her painful breakup with John (Chris Evans – yes, Captain America!), a struggling off-off-Broadway actor who was passionate about her but poor. Money, or the lack of it, destroyed their relationship; when she meets suave, witty and supremely well-heeled Harry (Pedro Pascal), he seems to be a dream come true. As they sink for the first time beneath his satin sheets, she asks how much his apartment is worth. The question doesn't faze him: $US12 million, he tells her. Bliss! What's not to love? All this accumulation of telling detail comes from Song's experience. 'I think I learned more about people in that six months [at the dating agency] than at any other period of my life, because people are very honest – more honest, I always think, than with a therapist,' she says. 'They would start describing the boyfriend they want and it was amazing the extent to which the language was like the language in the film: height, weight, job, lifestyle. Like at the morgue or the insurance company, everything was in numbers.' It didn't seem to have much to do with love. 'I knew love doesn't happen that way,' says Song, a professed romantic. She was already married, to screenwriter Justin Kuritzkes (who wrote the scripts for Challengers and Queer). 'For me, the gap between this game we were playing and what love really is seemed too vast,' Song says. 'There's no amount of doing the math, being smart or playing the game correctly that is going to get you to this very ancient, mysterious thing. All you can hope for is that it walks into your life one day and you know how to recognise it. That tension was something I was facing as a matchmaker.' Having invested in access to potential partners, clients would ready themselves for market with self-improvements, ranging from the ostensibly benign – going to the gym – to an excruciating and hugely expensive operation, undertaken by one character in the film, to increase his height by breaking and remaking his leg bones. 'So much of this has to do with trying to enhance the value of this material thing you have, which is your body,' says Song. 'I do think it's a very scary thing. It is part of this commodification of the self, trying to turn yourself into the most valuable object possible. And at the end of that journey you're like: 'Why wouldn't you get a surgery to get a little taller? Why wouldn't you get Botox to look a little younger?' You start to get no sense of why you wouldn't do any of these things, just following that logic that you are an asset.' One of the characters in Materialists, after her umpteenth rejection, protests that she is a person, not a piece of merchandise. This comes to her as a revelation. Loading Materialists is billed as a romcom but, while it is often funny, it has a much sharper edge than the marketing suggests. I observe that the actors she has cast – the famously charming Pascal, the Fifty Shades ingenue Johnson – bring associations with them that are, in themselves, a kind of asset. Song bridles. She chooses her actors for their talent, she says, and their awareness of the subject. ''I'm a person and not merchandise' is part of the philosophical part of being an actor,' she says. 'Because, of course, so many actors and models, people who are seen on screen, are often treated like merchandise. Every actor in my movie completely understood the film – and they understood it very deeply in their souls.' So I wonder, given such serious intent, why she chose the vehicle of romantic comedy? 'Well, the romcom is one of my favourite genres,' she says. 'And I think it is a genre with a beautiful accessibility to every single person on Earth. What is amazing about the romcom is that you get to walk into a movie theatre and get to talk about love, relationships, feelings and marriage and dating for two hours – what an amazing gift!' From the cast to the studio executives, she says, everyone who sees the film wants to talk to her afterwards about their own love lives. 'So I think of Materialists as the start of a conversation.' Romcoms are, of course, routinely dismissed as fluff. 'To which my answer is I wonder what happened to our culture, that love started to be considered not to be a serious subject?' says Song. 'I am concerned about that, because love is the most dramatic thing that everybody does. Everybody contends with love, dating, relationships – whether there are any, there being a lack, there being a lot, everything.' The genre has been downgraded over time, she believes, as mere 'girl shit'. The usual formation – as in her film – consists of a woman choosing between two men. 'It's a genre where a woman has so much power and gets to make a lot of decisions – and where, traditionally, a woman is the lead character,' she says. Compared with fighting the Entity while climbing around the wings of a light plane in mid-air, as Tom Cruise does in the latest Mission: Impossible, it's seen as small potatoes. Loading 'But I think: what a powerful thing, that we get to see a woman make a choice in her life, right? I think that is completely worthy of cinema.'
