30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- The Australian
Brooke Bellamy responds to RecipeTinEats Nagi Maehashi's allegations
Cakegate is heating up on Wednesday morning, with Brooke Bellamy, from Brooki's Bakehouse rejecting a rival cook's claim that she plagiarised, among other things, a caramel slice recipe.
Gen Y baking superstar, Brooke Bellamy, whose bright pink Bake with Brooki recipe guide was upon release the nation's No. 1 cookbook, told The Australian overnight that she had been making the contested caramel slice since at least December 2016, and – icing on the cake – she provided an Instagram snap of the slice (surely now Exhibit A in any legal dispute) on a laden table, with the date attached.
Her rival in the cookbooks, megaseller Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTin Eats has accused Brooki (everyone in this name tends to goes by a cute first name) of taking the caramel slice recipe, and a baklava recipe, without permission.
She has also publicly accused Brooki of taking recipes from at least one other chef, who 'didn't want to be named.'
The Australian understands that the other cook is the late Bill Grainger, of Bill's Bondi, and Bill's Surry Hills.
In a note to The Australian, Brooki said she had provided Nagi's legal team with evidence of her own caramel slice baking 'upon their first contact.'
On Instagram, she said: 'In light of the recent allegations made against me by RecipeTin Eats for plagiarising two of her recipes in my Bake with Brooki (caramel slice and baklava) I would like to make the following statement: I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book.'
Brooki said she had created her recipes over many years 'since falling in love with baking as a child … with my Mum in our home kitchen.'
'In 2016, I opened my first bakery. In March 2020, RecipeTin Eats published a recipe for caramel slice.
'It uses the same ingredients as my recipe, which I have been making and selling since four years prior.'
The Australian does not suggest that Brooki (or Nagi) took anyone's recipe, only that the allegation has been made.
The dispute may sound like a storm in a cupcake, but there's serious dough at stake.
Nagi's debut cookbook, RecipeTin: Eats (Dinner) has sold more than 350,000 copies, and her follow up, RecipeTin: Eats (Tonight) has sold 337,000 copies.
At a RRP of $49.99, that's more than $34 million in sales.
Brooki is fast catching up, with almost 100,000 copies of the baby-pink Bake With Brooki sold since it was launched in October 2024.
Brooki also sells cute 'merch' including oven mitts, and those massive water bottles so popular with the young.
With her smiley face, accessible ingredients, and failsafe, simple recipes, Nagi is a favourite of Gen X and Millennial home cooks, who need to whip up tasty meals on a budget.
Brooki's baby-pink cookbook is a favourite with Gen Y, who go nuts for her NYC cookie boxes. She recently opened a pop-up in Dubai, and the queue for cookies went around the block. It's not uncommon to see young girls screaming with pleasure outside her 'bakehouses.'
Things have been frosty between the two cooks since December, when one of Nagi's devoted readers alerted her to similarities between the two caramel slice recipes.
Nagi says she didn't want to stir up trouble, but says lawyers for Penguin Random House, which publishes Brooki, refused to take her complaint seriously.
'I'm no stranger to seeing my recipes being copied online. But 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.'
Nagi has engaged Simpsons, a law firm specialising in intellectual property 'to help me understand my rights, assess my legal position, and handle correspondence from Penguin's lawyers.'
'Regardless, it's not about the number – it's about the principle. Rewarding shortcuts devalues the hard work of every original creator who does things the right way,' Nagi said.
'And let's not forget – this is not a small book gathering dust in the dark corner of bookshops. This has been a blockbuster launched with a big marketing campaign. $4.6 million worth of sales in Australia alone, in less than six months.
It is not clear that recipes can in fact be plagiarised, and in any case, plagiarism is not illegal. It is considered unethical.
Some recipes may attract copyright protection, but this hasn't been tested by the Australian courts. Recipe for success: just good taste Caroline Overington Literary Editor
Caroline Overington has twice won Australia's most prestigious award for journalism, the Walkley Award for Investigative Journalism; she has also won the Sir Keith Murdoch award for Journalistic Excellence; and the richest prize for business writing, the Blake Dawson Prize. She writes thrillers for HarperCollins, and she's the author of Last Woman Hanged, which won the Davitt Award for True Crime Writing. Nation
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