As a war over sensational claims of recipe plagiarism continues to unfold between Australia’s biggest cookbook authors, Nagi Maehashi is now urging trolls to stop attacking Brooke ‘Brooki’ Bellamy online.
Nagi, who is known to many as the best selling author of RecipeTin Eats, slammed fellow baker and cookbook author Brooki on Tuesday over two recipes she claims have stark similarities to her own.
Taking to her website, Nagi, 47, wrote, “I’m no stranger to seeing my recipes being copied online. 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” – claims that Brooki has categorically denied and called “deeply distressing”.
Since the allegations were raised by Nagi, Brooki and her business, Brooki Bakehouse, have been the target of online trolls.
She was also dropped as an ambassador for the Academy for Enterprising Girls, a federally funded workshop to help girls start their own businesses.
On 1 May, Nagi took to social media again to urge the online trolls to stop targeting Brooki, and emphasised the legal allegations were against Brooki’s publisher, Penguin Australia.
“I know I’ve made serious allegations… but this does not justify the personal attacks I’ve seen online against Brooke Bellamy,” Nagi shared.
“I do not support it and I’m asking you to stop.”
In a statement posted to social media, Brooki said, “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.
“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,” she said, adding that she has been making and selling the controversial caramel slice recipe since 2016, which is four years prior to RecipeTin Eats publishing its recipe.
But Nagi has hit back online, sharing that she published the recipe in 2016 as well.
The renowned food blogger, whose RecipeTin Eats books Dinner and Tonight have sold millions of copies worldwide, shared excerpts of her two recipes for caramel slice and baklava alongside recipes found in Brooke’s book, Bake With Brooki.
“To me, the similarities are so specific and detailed that calling these a coincidence feels disingenuous,” wrote Nagi.
“Profiting from plagiarised recipes is unethical, even if not a copyright breach, and it’s a slap in the face to every author who puts in the hard work to create original content rather than cutting corners.”
MONEY MATTERS
Nagi notes that Bake With Brooki has “sold more than 92,000 copies in less than six months” after it was released in October last year, which, according to Nielson BookScan, results in “$4.6 million worth of sales”.
“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,” she added.
“And because the income from my website helps fund my food bank, RecipeTin Meals, this isn’t just legally questionable – I find it ethically indefensible.”
Making matters all the more awkward, Bake With Brooki has also been shortlisted for the Australian Book Industry Awards alongside Nagi’s book, Tonight.
The awards are set to announce the winner this Wednesday night.
Nagi claims that there are “other authors”, including one “very well known, beloved cookbook author” whose recipes also share “extensive similarities” to Brooke’s, and while she chooses not to name any of them “out of respect”, other authors are starting to come out of the woodwork to back her.
Just hours after Nagi went public with her claims, American baker Sally McKenney released a statement on Instagram, stating that she believes her 2019 recipe, The Best Vanilla Cake I’ve Ever Had, was also plagiarised in Bake With Brooki, and even appears in visual form on Brooke’s YouTube channel.
She adds that Nagi had alerted her to the similarities “months ago”.
“Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit,” Sally states.
“Especially in a bestselling cookbook.”
IN COME THE LAWYERS
Nagi has labelled the publisher of Brooke’s book Penguin Australia “profoundly disappointing” for continuing to sell it after she says she brought the matter to their attention in December 2024.
She adds that she has been contacted through Penguin’s lawyers, telling her, “Our client respectfully rejects your clients’ allegations and confirms that the recipes in [Bake With Brooki] were written by Brooke Bellamy.”
Taking to her own Instagram, Brooke insists that she “did not plagiarise any recipes” and claims she communicated to Nagi she’d offered to remove the recipes in question from future reprints of the book to “prevent further aggravation”.
“[This] was communicated to Nagi swiftly through discussions,” she continued.
Nagi has yet to refute these claims, but has hired legal representation.
