How they stack up: The vanilla cakes at centre of wild plagiarism claims

Perth Now

30-04-2025

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.
WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE: Bitter battle breaks out between two of Australia's most famous bakers.
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. Sally McKenney's Best Vanilla Cake recipe on the left, compared with Brooke Bellamy's Best Fluffy Vanilla Cake Recipe on the right. Credit: Sally's Baking / Brooki Sally McKenney, the baker behind Sally's Baking Addiction, has joined Nagi Maehashi from RecipeTin Eats in accusing Brooke Bellamy of plagiarising recipes. Credit: Sally's Baking Addiction
'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. RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi and Brooke Bellamy, who founded Brooki Bakehouse. Credit: RecipeTin Eats/Brooki Bakehouse
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 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.'
- With AAP