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Daily Mail
08-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Daily Mail
EXCLUSIVE Bakery guru Brooke Bellamy and her husband break cover as she's seen for the first time since her caramel slice copycat row with RecipeTin Eats cook Nagi
Baker Brooke Bellamy has been seen in public for the first time since being accused of plagiarism in her best-selling cookbook. She broke cover with her husband Justice Bellamy - making a fashion statement by wearing Crocs with socks - as they visited a Brisbane office block housing a firm of lawyers and financial planners. Brooke has kept firmly hidden from view since RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi accused her of stealing recipes for her debut cookbook Bake with Brooki. The couple were pictured leaving her Brooki Bakehouse in Fortitude Valley in inner Brisbane on Thursday, wearing chef-favoured clogs. Dressed in Birkenstock clogs and an oversized hoody, newly-pregnant Brooke looked downcast as she engaged with her husband, clad in pale Crocs and grey socks. The rubber clogs are popular amongst chefs, bakers and kitchen hands due to their comfort and safety in the demanding kitchen environment and are designed to be non-slip, preventing falls on potentially slippery surfaces It's the first time the pair have been seen together since allegations of copyright infringement came to light. Last week, Ms Maehashi raised claims two of her recipes had been taken without permission or attribution. Sally McKenney, the US author and blogger behind Sally's Baking Addiction, came forward with similar claims about Ms Bellamy hours later. Ms Bellamy has denied the accusations, saying she had been making and selling her recipes well before Ms Maehashi's were published. The saga took a turn on Wednesday night at the 2025 Australian Book Industry Awards in Melbourne where both Brooke and Nagi were nominated for Illustrated Book of the Year category. She then appeared to take a subtle swipe at Brooke, who was a no-show at the event despite being nominated. 'It's so exciting. I'm very nervous, but also very happy to be here amongst all this incredible talent,' she said. While Brooke was nowhere to be seen, Nagi took the prize for her cookbook RecipeTin Eats: Tonight. Losing out to her nemesis was the latest blow for Brooke, who also was stripped of her ambassadorship for the Academy for Enterprising Girls; a government program to help girls think like an entrepreneur and start their own business one day. '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 Daily Mail Australia. '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.' The plagiarism row took a further twist on Wednesday night when award-winning chef/restaurateur Luke Mangan accused Ms Maehashi of not crediting him appropriately for one of his recipes. He said that while she 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 to provide a link to his website. 'If a recipe is borrowed one should be asked for permission,' he said. 'To my knowledge we were not asked to use that particular recipe.' He said he would expect any one who uses his recipes should include the name of the book it came through and credit both his website and the restaurant name. Ms Maehashi adapted Mr Mangan's butter chicken recipe - adding salt and a low-fat cream option - and referenced the chef in a footnote online. Mr Mangan was not mentioned in the print copy but it did feature a QR code linking to the online credited version. Ms 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'. Both Mr Mangan and Ms Maehashi were contacted by Daily Mail Australia for comment. The plagiarism row erupted on Tuesday when Ms Maehashi posted a series of claims that Ms Bellamy had copied recipes for her million-dollar book. 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 work to develop and test recipes deserve credit - especially in a best selling cookbook.' Ms Bellamy issued a plea for privacy in the wake of the fresh claims made by Ms McKenney on Wednesday. 'The past 24 hours have been extremely overwhelming,' a statement read. 'II 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.' 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 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,' Ms 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.' 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. While the Brisbane baker insisted she did not copy the recipes, she 'immediately offered to remove both from future reprints to prevent further aggravation'. In Ms Maehashi's Instagram post, she described Ms Bellamy of ' profiting' from the alleged plagiarised recipes. Ms 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.'
Canberra Times
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Canberra Times
Knives out over cookbook scandal, the latest in a string of juicy controversies
High-profile US baker, food blogger and cookbook author Sally McKenney, of Sally's Baking Addiction, prides herself on her well-tested recipes (like Maehashi). She claims Bellamy reproduced her recipe for "Best Vanilla Cake" (first published in 2019), both in her cookbook, Bake with Brooki, and on her YouTube channel. Bellamy has denied all allegations, including these latest ones. I'm not suggesting plagiarism has occurred, only that allegations have been made.
News.com.au
07-05-2025
- Entertainment
- News.com.au
Australian baking rivals Brooke Bellamy and Nagi Maehashi set for public showdown at Melbourne Book Awards
Brooke Bellamy and RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi could be forced to cross paths for the first time since the drama erupted last week between them. Bellamy and Maehashi's baking books are both short-listed in the Illustrated Book of the Year category at the Book Industry Awards in Melbourne. Meanwhile Maehashi is only nominated for one award, Bellamy is also up the Marketing and Publicity Campaign of the Year award. Maehashi previously was crowned the winner of the Illustrated Book of the Year category back in 2023. It's been a difficult few weeks for Bellamy, who was recently dropped from working as an ambassador for the Academy for Enterprising Girls, a federally funded entrepreneurship program to help young women aged between 10 and 18 learn new skills. The popular TikTok star and Brisbane bakery owner was accused by fellow author and cook Maehashi of plagiarising two recipes in her best-selling book, Bake with Brooki. A famed US baker, Sally McKenney, then claimed that a cake recipe from a book she had published in 2019 was also used in Bellamy's 2024 cookbook, which has racked up an estimated $4.6 million in sales. Bellamy denies ever copying another baker's recipe and said the backlash she has faced since the accusations first emerged has been 'deeply distressing'. '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 said in a statement. '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.' Maehashi accused Bellamy of plagiarising her caramel slice and baklava recipes from her site RecipeTin Eats. Additionally, she claimed that other authors had their recipes copied by Bellamy. Bellamy vigorously denied these claims as well. '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 multimillion-dollar book launched with a huge publicity campaign from one of Australia's biggest publishers was shocking.' Bellamy then shared a statement with saying the backlash she has faced since the accusations first emerged have been 'deeply distressing' both for her and her family. 'The past 24 hours have been extremely overwhelming,' said the star in a statement, saying that she has faced 'attacks' on social media as a result. '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.' Bellamy went on to insist that she has never copied another baker's recipe, and instead has only ever 'drawn inspiration' for her own creations. 'I do not copy other 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 continued: '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.'
