Latest news with #RecipeTin
News.com.au
02-05-2025
- Business
- News.com.au
Nagi Maehashi and Brooke Bellamy to face-off at Award's Night
The time honoured tradition of passing down a family recipe took a vicious hit this week when best-selling cookbook author and blogger Nagi Maehashi called in the lawyers, inturn setting an internet mob after local rival Brooke Bellamy of Brooki Bakehouse. Hours after RecipeTin Eats founder Maehashi accused Bellamy's book publisher Penguin Random House of copyright infringement allegations, a publishing storm erupted over who owned the rights to two recipes, one for caramel slice, the other for European classic baklava. What Maehashi would later call a simple 'business dispute' others claimed was a more strategic strike against an online rival whose cookbook, Bake with Brooki, has been nominated against Maehashi's own cookbook, Tonight with Nagi Maehashi, at next week's Australian Book Industry Awards. By Thursday night the temperature on the stoush had dropped to a simmer when Maehashi posted an appeal for calm to Instagram, which had the effect of restoking media interest. She has 1.6 million of them on Instagram and 3.8 million of them on Facebook – an army. 'Please stop the trolling. Now I know I've made serious allegations but this does not justify the personal attacks that I've seen online against Brooke Bellamy. I do not support it and I'm asking you to stop,' Maehashi posted on Thursday. 'Fundamentally at the end of the day we're talking recipes and this is a business dispute. These are allegations I have made against Penguin, a corporate. Allegations made by my company. so we've gotta be respectful about this. It's the RecipeTin way.' By Friday 'the RecipeTin way' was also under attack after Maehashi's critics pointed out the businesswoman, a graduate of academically selective North Sydney Girls High who has a Bachelor of Commerce from UTS, had spent 17 years in corporate finance before starting her online food blog in 2012 and knows a thing or two about the rules of engagement in a corporate war. From the RecipeTins' founder's left flank had emerged a new force – rival chefs and publishers quick to point out Maehashi's own business model is built on her modification of other people's recipes. Luke Mangan's butter chicken, Matt Moran's pork tenderloin with creamy marsala sauce and Thai beef curry (which he credits inspiration to Indigenous actor Meyne Wyatt), Nigel Slater's creamy chicken in white wine sauce, Yotam Ottolenghi's cauliflower salad, his middle eastern chickpea salad, his green bean salad, his roasted broccolini with tahini sauce, Jamie Oliver's chicken milk seriously delish, Nigella Lawson's noodle salad with creamy sesame peanut dressing, and so it goes. Surely Maehashi sees how fraught it can be to call out others over similar recipes. This week Mangan revealed he was peeved Maehashi, who provided a footnote acknowledging his involvement online for his butter chicken recipe but not in her printed book, hadn't provided a link to his website. Maehashi's book features the disclaimer that efforts were made to contact copyright holders. Mangan's statement hinted he felt the blogger might not have tried that hard. Celebrity cook Adam Liaw, who has a background as an intellectual property lawyer, scoffed at the suggestion you could own a recipe. 'Copyright doesn't protect the recipe itself. It protects the publication of the exact same written form of that recipe,' he told media. 'There is no Mr Bolognese in Bologna, everything is built on what came before. Food is a collective endeavour.' From the RecipeTin Eats' founder's right flank on Friday emerged a new threat – search engine optimisation specialists eager to point out Maehashi's success lies not in the online publication of recipes or in the recipes themselves, not even in her cute pictures of her romping in her garden with her golden retriever Dozer, but in her canny talent for adding instructions to her recipes that optimises her content online and lands her at the top of Google's search engine. 'She's almost always at the top of a Google search for a commonly searched for recipe,' said one, 'and that's where she makes her real money.' While Maehashi's recipes are free to her platform followers, the ads embedded in her posts are generating a fortune which helped pay for a $7 million home in Hunter's Hill in 2023, which she swiftly returned to market the following year – $420,000 in stamp duty be damned. Meanwhile, having denied Maehashi's allegations of plagiarising her caramel slice and baklava recipes, Bellamy, who is pregnant, has retreated to take care of her young family and business. 'The past 24 hours have been extremely overwhelming,' she said in a statement. 'I have had media outside my home and business and have been attacked online. It has been deeply distressing for my colleagues and my young family. '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. 'My priority right now is to ensure the welfare of the fantastic team at Brooki Bakehouse and that of my family.' Penguin is standing by Bellamy, say sources. Perhaps if Maehashi hopes to calm the matter, she could start by taking down her original April 29 Facebook post, which by Friday had 1.2k comments and been shared 900 times. Footnote: A quick search reveals the caramel slice has been around for decades and has its origins in Scotland's shortbread biscuit created in the 12th century, though the caramel and chocolate layers appear to have been added a mere 50 years ago. It first appeared in its present form in an Australian Women's Weekly cookbook in the eighties. Baklava is more ancient and has its origins either in ancient Rome or Greece or the 8th century cookhouses of the Assyrians of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Kuwait and Turkey, a people you'd only accuse of plagiarism at your own risk. How times have changed.
Daily Mail
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
Recipetin eats founder begs fans to stop attacking Brooke Bellamy as the cook shuts down her social media amid plagiarism row
Cookbook author and blogger Nagi Maehashi has taken a stand against 'trolls' who have been attacking Brooke Bellamy amid their plagiarism row. Maehashi sparked a firestorm when she alleged former travel blogger-turned-baker Bellamy copied two of her recipes for caramel slice, and baklava in her book, Bake with Brooki. On Thursday the row took a surprise turn when Maehashi posted a video to Instagram betting her fans and supporters to leave Bellamy alone. 'Please stop the trolling' the Australian cook said in the clip. 'Now I know I've made serious allegations, but this does not justify the personal attacks that I've seen online against Brooke Bellamy' she continued. 'I do not support it, and I'm asking you to stop. I know that this is just a very, very small percentage of people online. I know the majority of people are good, fun, normal people. 'You know, share your opinions, have heated debates, support Brookie, support me, disagree with both of us, think we're pathetic, whatever you want, but just keep it respectful, no trolling, no hateful comments.' Maehashi went on: 'Fundamentally, at the end of the day, we're talking recipes, and this is a business dispute. 'You know, these are legal allegations that I've made against Penguin, a corporate, allegations made by my company. 'So it just, we've gotta be respectful about this, you know, it's the Recipe Tin way.' It comes after online baking sensation Bellamy locked down her social media amid a furious backlash over the plagiarism row which has blown up around her. In the wake of the blockbuster claims, other chefs and authors have also now come forward with similar allegations. US-based baker Sally McKenney of Sally's Baking Addiction fame claimed on Instagram that Bellamy had also copied her vanilla cake recipe after Maehashi reached out to alert her about it. 'Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit – especially in a best-selling cookbook,' McKenney said. Maehashi sparked a firestorm when she alleged former travel blogger-turned-baker Bellamy copied two of her recipes for caramel slice, and baklava in her book, Bake with Brooki. Bellamy has denied the allegations Pregnant mother-of-one Bellamy rejected the claim, posting to Instagram that her book Bake with Brooki is made up of recipes 'created over many years'. She has denied the plagiarism allegations and insisted she has been making the caramel slice recipe since 2016, re-posting a snap of the creation she made at that time. Bellamy has now bunkered down at her $3.6million three-bedroom home in Brisbane and issued a plea for privacy as she turned her personal Instagram account to private after trolls flooded her pages with savage attacks over the row. 'The past 24 hours have been extremely overwhelming,' she said in a statement. 'I have had media outside my home and business, and have been attacked online. It has been deeply distressing for my colleagues and my young family. '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. 'My priority right now is to ensure the welfare of the fantastic team at Brooki Bakehouse and that of my family.' Penguin has also denied the allegations, saying via their lawyers: 'Our client respectfully rejects your client's allegations and confirms that the recipes in [Bake with Brooki] were written by Brooke Bellamy', according to Maehashi. Award-winning chef and restaurateur Luke Mangan joined the furore but turned the tables and accused RecipeTin Eats of not crediting him properly for one of his dishes. He said that while Maehashi did provide a footnote credit to him for a butter chicken recipe she had used online and in her book, she should have got in touch to say she was using it, and added a link to his website. 'I couldn't say off the top of my head whether she did reach out and ask permission or not, but I would have thought, in general, you would contact the person whose recipe it was,' he said. 'All of my recipes in my (seven) books are copyrighted, we own them, they are our intellectual property.' Maehashi adapted Mangan's butter chicken recipe - adding salt and a low-fat cream option - and referenced the chef in a footnote online. Mangan was not mentioned in the print copy but it did feature a QR code linking to the online credited version. Maehashi's book includes the statement 'the author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book'. Things took a further twist on Wednesday after Bellamy was dumped as an ambassador for a federal government-funded girls business program over the row. She was due to be announced as an VIP figurehead for the Academy for Enterprising Girls. '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 Daily Telegraph. 'While we make no legal assessment on the allegations aired in the media, we have informed Bellamy that we will not move forward with the engagement at this time.' Both Penguin and Bellamy strenuously deny the allegations. 'I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years,' Bellamy said on Tuesday night. 'In 2016, I opened my first bakery. I have been creating my recipes and selling them commercially since October 2016. 'On 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.' Maehashi has since countered with a internet webarchive screenshot showing her same recipe from April 29, 2016. While Bellamy insisted she did not copy the recipes, she 'immediately offered to remove both from future reprints to prevent further aggravation'. In Maehashi's Instagram post, she accused Bellamy of 'profiting' from the allegedly plagiarised recipes. Maehashi claims she first raised concerns with Penguin in December. 'I put a huge amount of effort into my recipes. And I share them on my website for anyone to use for free,' she said. 'To see them plagiarised (in my view) and used in a book for profit, without credit, doesn't just feel unfair. It feels like a blatant exploitation of my work.' Maehashi is the founder of popular website, RecipeTin Eats, which has 1.5 million followers on Instagram. She is also the author of award-winning cookbooks Dinner and Tonight. Bellamy quickly became a global sensation after sharing videos on TikTok, which receive millions of views each day. She is best known for her cookies and has opened pop-up stores in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Her Bake With Brooki is a bestselling cookbook published by Penguin in October last year and retails for $49.99. Maehashi and Bellamy could face off next week at the Australian book industry awards in Melbourne, where their respective bestselling cookbooks have both been nominated for the 2025 Illustrated Book of the Year.
Daily Mail
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
RecipeTinsEats' plagiurism scandal takes another turn as another author comes forward
A second author has accused Brooke Bellamy of stealing recipes for use in her bestselling cookbook Bake With Brooki. Hours after RecipeTin Eats' Nagi Maehashi raised allegations of copyright infringement on Tuesday night, Sally McKenney, author and blogger behind Sally's Baking Addiction, levelled the claims. Ms Bellamy, who owns the popular Brooki Bakehouse in Brisbane, denied the accusations, saying she had been making and selling her recipes before Ms Maehashi's were published. The allegations relate to Ms Maehashi's caramel slice and baklava recipe, along with Ms McKenney's Best Vanilla Cake recipe. Ms McKenney posted on social media, saying she was first alerted to the similarity months ago. She said her recipe was first published in 2019. 'One of my recipes was also plagiarised in this book and also appears on the author's YouTube channel,' she said. 'Original recipe creators who put in the word to develop and test recipes deserve credit-especially in a best selling cookbook.' Bake With Brooki is a bestselling cookbook published by Penguin in October last year and retails for $49.99. Ms Bellamy quickly became a global sensation after sharing 'day in the life' videos on TikTok, which receive millions of views each day. She is best known for her cookies and has opened pop-up stores in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Both Penguin and Ms Bellamy deny the allegations. 'I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years,' she said. 'In 2016, I opened my first bakery. I have been creating my recipes and selling them commercially since October 2016.' Ms Bellamy posted an image showing her caramel slice, which dated back to December 2016. 'On 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,' she said. Ms Maehashi's (above) accused Ms Bellamy of 'profiting' from the alleged plagiarised recipes The Brisbane baker said she 'immediately offered' to remove both recipes from future reprints to prevent further aggravation'. In Ms Maehashi's Instagram post, she described Ms Bellamy of 'profiting' from the alleged plagiarised recipes. The author claims she first raised concerns with Penguin in December. 'I put a huge amount of effort into my recipes. And I share them on my website for anyone to use for free,' she said. 'To see them plagiarised (in my view) and used in a book for profit, without credit, doesn't just feel unfair. It feels like a blatant exploitation of my work.' Ms Maehashi is the founder of popular website, RecipeTin, which has 1.5 million followers on Instagram. She is also the author of award-winning cookbooks Dinner and Tonight.
Perth Now
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Perth Now
Second author accuses viral baker of plagiarising
A second author has accused Brooke Bellamy of stealing recipes for use in her bestselling cookbook Bake With Brooki. Hours after RecipeTin Eats' Nagi Maehashi raised allegations of copyright infringement on Tuesday night, Sally McKenney, author and blogger behind Sally's Baking Addiction, levelled the claims. Ms Bellamy, who owns the popular Brooki Bakehouse in Brisbane, denied the accusations, saying she had been making and selling her recipes before Ms Maehashi's were published. The allegations relate to Ms Maehashi's caramel slice and baklava recipe, along with Ms McKenney's Best Vanilla Cake recipe. Ms McKenney posted on social media, saying she was first alerted to the similarity months ago. She said her recipe was first published in 2019. 'One of my recipes was also plagiarised in this book and also appears on the author's YouTube channel,' she said. 'Original recipe creators who put in the word to develop and test recipes deserve credit-especially in a best selling cookbook.' Bake With Brooki is a bestselling cookbook published by Penguin in October last year and retails for $49.99. Ms Bellamy quickly became a global sensation after sharing 'day in the life' videos on TikTok, which receive millions of views each day. She is best known for her cookies and has opened pop-up stores in Abu Dhabi and Dubai. Both Penguin and Ms Bellamy deny the allegations. 'I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years,' she said. 'In 2016, I opened my first bakery. I have been creating my recipes and selling them commercially since October 2016.' Ms Bellamy posted an image showing her caramel slice, which dated back to December 2016. 'On 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,' she said. The Brisbane baker said she 'immediately offered' to remove both recipes from future reprints to prevent further aggravation'. In Ms Maehashi's Instagram post, she described Ms Bellamy of 'profiting' from the alleged plagiarised recipes. The author claims she first raised concerns with Penguin in December. 'I put a huge amount of effort into my recipes. And I share them on my website for anyone to use for free,' she said. 'To see them plagiarised (in my view) and used in a book for profit, without credit, doesn't just feel unfair. It feels like a blatant exploitation of my work.' Ms Maehashi is the founder of popular website, RecipeTin, which has 1.5 million followers on Instagram. She is also the author of award-winning cookbooks Dinner and Tonight.
News.com.au
29-04-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
‘Shocking': Brooki Bakehouse denies Naga Maeshi's claims she copied recipes in her cookbook
Nagi Maehashi has taken to social media to publicly call out fellow celebrity cook Brooke Bellamy whom she claims copied recipes for a best-selling book. Publisher Penguin and Bellamy have denied the claims. Maehashi claimed on Tuesday morning that Bellamy's cookbook, Bake with Brooki, contains two recipes remarkably similar to her beloved RecipeTin Eats recipes – caramel slice and baklava. However, Bellamy has since refuted the claims and insisted she has been using the recipes years before they were published by Maehashi. 'I'm no stranger to seeing my recipes copied online,' Maehashi wrote in a post on Instagram and on her website. 'But seeing what I believe to be my recipes and my words printed in a multi-million dollar book launched with a huge publicity campaign from one of Australia's biggest publishers was shocking.' Maehashi shared that she has been stressed over whether or not to share her grievance publicly for weeks. 'This isn't a post I'm publishing lightly. I've spent many sleepless nights fretting over it, and many hours writing it. The easiest and safest path would be to stay silent. I know there's risk that legal action may be brought against me for speaking out, and it's daunting to take on a major publisher and an influencer with a huge TikTok following. But I'm going ahead because, in my heart, I know it's the right thing to do.' Maehashi was first alerted to the similarities between recipes, both the ingredients and the attached cooking instructions, in November when a reader made her aware. 'While recipes can resemble one another, because there are only so many ways some recipes can be made, the precision and detail in the similarities in this case are, in my opinion, far too strong to be a coincidence,' continued her post. Maehashi, whose own book was locked in a battle for the Xmas number one spot last year with Bake with Brooki, revealed that her rival's book had sold 92,849 copies since its release, citing official stats released publicly. 'That's $4.6 million worth of sales,' she said. However, Penguin's lawyers have denied the allegations. has also reached out to the publisher directly for comment. In response to the claims, Bellamy took to Instagram to share a statement on Tuesday evening, denying plagiarising recipes, and revealing she had been using the recipes for almost a decade. 'I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book,' began the statement. 'I have been creating my recipes and selling them commercially since 2016. On March 2020, RecipeTin published a recipe for a caramel slice. It uses the same ingredients as my recipe, which I have been making and selling since four years prior.' Bellamy went on to allege that she 'immediately' offered to remove the recipes from future copies of her book to prevent 'further aggravation', which she claims was communicated to Maehashi. 'I have great respect for Nagi and what she has done for cooks content creators and cookbooks in Australia. 'Recipe development in today's world is enveloped in inspiration from other cooks, cookbook authors and food bloggers and content creators. The willingness to share recipes and build on what has come before is what I love so much about baking and sharing recipes.' In her own statement before Bellamy's response was published, Maehashi told her followers that while she's unsure whether her recipe is protected under copyright law in Australia, she likely wouldn't have even asked for a fee to share her recipe had she been asked.
