Crushing career blow for Brooki Bakehouse's Brooke Bellamy amid devastating plagiarism claims

7NEWS

30-04-2025

Brooki Bakehouse owner Brooke Bellamy has been dropped from a high-profile ambassador role in the wake of plagiarism claims by RecipeTin Eats author Nagi Maehashi.
Maehashi claims Bellamy reproduced recipes from the RecipeTin Eats website and other authors in her own book, Bake With Brooki. Nagi claimed Bellamy plagiarised her caramel slice recipe.
Bellamy was hit by a second accusation by US baker Sally McKenney, of Sally's Baking Addiction, who claimed Bellamy's vanilla cake recipe was extremely similar to her own.
Bellamy and Penguin Random House Australia, which published her book, have denied the allegations.
Bellamy has been dropped as an Academy for Enterprising Girls ambassador, a role funded by the federal government, The Daily Telegraph reported on Thursday.
'Brooke Bellamy was recently engaged to conduct a small number of promotional activities for the Academy for Enterprising Girls program over the coming months,' an academy spokesman told the publication.
'While we make no legal assessment on the allegations aired in the media, we have informed Bellamy we will not move forward with the engagement at this time.'
On Thursday, legal expert Isabella Alexander appeared on Sunrise to dissect the claims against Bellamy.
'It is possible (to plagiarise a recipe). This might surprise a lot of people but, because it is a literary work, it falls within the literary act,' Alexander said.
'We are not talking about copying a cake itself or a slice itself or the idea of cooking a slice, but it is the actual words on the page that explain what the ingredient are and how you cook.
'That could be potentially protected by copyright law.'
Alexander explained these are very difficult cases to prosecute.
'My first legal thought is how difficult these cases are (to prove in court). As mentioned before, it is really difficult to do a new recipe of a classic dish,' Alexander said.
'If you are going to make a caramel slice it has to have certain ingredients and, to work, they have to be in similar proportions.
'Copyright protects the author's independent expression and it is hard to do that with a list of ingredients.
'It is more in the instructions. That is where the author can put their twist on the recipe.
'Some recipes are easy to follow and some are not so much. That is where you would be looking for the similarities.
'But, they would have to have a lot of similarities in a case like this.'
Alexander explained the difference between plagiarism and copyright.
'Plagiarism is different to copyright. Plagiarism is just copying someone's idea without giving them credit for it. But copyright law has a lot more specificity because it is a legal action.
'You need to prove that you created the recipe yourself. That it is an original work and that the person who copied it, copied the entirety of the recipe or a substantial part of it.
'And the part that they copied is the intellectual contribution that you, as the author, brought to it.
'These cases are hard to prove and very expensive to bring, so that is why you don't see very many of them.'