Food authors say Australian influencer copied their recipes

Two cookbook authors have accused TikTok influencer Brooke Bellamy of copying their recipes.

Nagi Maehashi, the Australian founder of popular food website RecipeTin Eats, said Ms Bellamy’s cookbook contains recipes with “word-for-word similarities to mine”.

Ms Bellamy, who owns the popular Brooki Bakehouse, has rejected her allegations, saying her book contains “100 recipes I have created over many years”. One of those in question was created before Ms Maehashi published hers, she claims.

Hours after Ms Maehashi’s raised her allegations, US author Sally McKenney also accused Ms Bellamy of plagiarising her vanilla cake recipe.

Ms Maehashi said that a reader pointed out what she described as “remarkable similarities” between her caramel slice recipe and the one in Ms Bellamy’s best-selling cookbook Bake with Brooki.

She said she later also discovered similarities between her baklava recipe and Ms Bellamy’s, offering a side-by-side comparison in a statement on RecipeTin Eats.

Ms Maehashi is the author of two cookbooks and her website, which she started in 2014, attracts a monthly readership of 45 million page views.

Ms Bellamy is the owner of three Brooki Bakehouse branches, all in Queensland, which were set up in 2022. She is also a popular baker on TikTok with two million followers.

Ms Maehashi said she had contacted Ms Bellamy’s publisher, Penguin Random House Australia, adding that they “brought in lawyers and resorted to what felt to me legal intimidation”.

“It feels like a blatant exploitation of my work. To see them plagiarised and used in a book for profit, without permission, and without credit, doesn’t just feel unfair,” she added.

Ms Maehashi has retained her own legal counsel and has written to both Ms Bellamy and Penguin.

Bake with Brooki was published in October 2024 and has since sold A$4.6m (£2.1m; $2.9) worth of copies.

Penguin and Ms Bellamy have both strenuously denied the accusations, with the publisher issuing a response to Ms Maehashi confirming “the recipes in the BWB Book were written by Brooke Bellamy”.

Despite maintaining no wrongdoing, Ms Bellamy said she offered to take down the recipes from future reprints “to prevent further aggravation”, and that this was communicated “swiftly” to Ms Maehashi.

She added that she had “great respect for Nagi”, but has stood by her recipes in a series of Instagram stories.

“Recipe development in today’s world is enveloped in inspiration from other cooks, cookbook authors, food bloggers and content creators,” she said, adding that the “willingness to share receipes” is what she loves about baking.

Both Ms Maehashi’s and Ms Bellamy’s cookbooks have been shortlisted for this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards.

Ms McKenney, who authors the website Sally’s Baking Addiction, accused Ms Bellamy of copying her vanilla cake recipe, which is included in Ms Bellamy’s cookbook and YouTube channel.

“Original receipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit – especially in a best-selling cookbook,” Ms McKenny wrote on Instagram.