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Brooke Bellamy is facing back-to-back plagiarism allegations from two individuals. While RecipeTin Eats’ founder Nagi Maehashi accused her of copyright infringement, food blogger and author Sally McKenny alleged that Bellamy stole her recipes and published them as her own in her bestselling cookbook, Bake with Brooki.
Brooke Bellamy is an Australian baker, author, entrepreneur, travel show host, and food blogger who owns the bakery business Brooki Bakehouse in Brisbane.
On April 29, 2025, fellow Australian food blogger and author Nagi Maehashi released a statement, “When you see your recipes in a $4 million book,” via TikTok and Instagram, and claimed that Brooke plagiarized two of her recipes in her cookbook, published by Penguin Random House last year. The two recipes that were flagged were for caramel slice and baklava. The RecipeTin Eats owner alleged that Bake with Brooki also had recipes with similarities to those by other authors.
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“I put a huge amount of effort into my recipes. And I share them on my website for anyone to use for free. To see them plagiarized (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,” Nagi wrote.
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.”
Both Brooke Bellamy and Penguin Random House have since denied the allegations.
Meanwhile, American food author Sally McKenny and the founder of Sally’s Baking Addiction, took to her Instagram Stories on April 30, 2025, tagging RecipeTin Eats, and wrote:
“Nagi, you know how much I admire and support you – and I’m so grateful you let me know months ago that one of my recipes (The Best Vanilla Cake I’ve Ever Had, published by me in 2019) was also plagiarized in this book and also appears on the author’s YouTube channel.”
Brooke hasn’t specifically responded to Sally’s allegations yet.
All you need to know about Brooke Bellamy amid the allegations
Brooke Bellamy is a Tasmania-born and Brisbane-based baker, business owner, and content creator. Through the 2010s, she ran an online travel show called World of Wanderlust, where she shared solo traveling tips with her viewers. She opened her bakery, Charlie’s Dessert House, in Launceston in 2016, followed by Brooki Bakehouse in Fortitude Valley, Brisbane, in 2022. Her bakeries are known for cookies, cakes, and macarons, and deliver across the country.
Brooke Bellamy began food blogging on YouTube (@BrookiBakehouse) and TikTok (@brookibakehouse) in 2022. She has over 3 million followers on FoodTok where she conducts a DITL (Day in the Life) video series, and 698K subscribers on YouTube. She is also active on Instagram with more than 512,000 followers.
Bellamy has hosted pop-up bakeries in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, and three locations across Queensland.
More about the accusations against Brooke Bellamy and her subsequent response
Last Tuesday, Nagi Maehashi accused Brooke Bellamy of allegedly plagiarizing her caramel slice and baklava recipes in her cookbook, Bake with Brooki, and “profiting” from them. Her blog post on her website and social media handles read:
“I’m no stranger to seeing my recipes 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.”
It added, “Brooke – It didn’t have to be like this. If you had asked for permission, I would have given it and, knowing me, proudly promoted your book on launch. It costs nothing to credit. Do better. Because the authors who pour their time, skill, and originality into their work – the ones you claim to champion – deserve it.”
She mentioned being alerted by the issue by a reader and claimed that she made the publisher, Penguin Random House, aware of the same in December 2024. However, their legal team refuted the claims.
“Our client respectfully rejects your client’s allegations and confirms that the recipes in the BWB Book were written by Brooke Bellamy,” the representative stated.
According to Nagi, she has nothing to gain from speaking out, but staying silent would make her “complicit”, as she wasn’t the only alleged victim of Bellamy’s alleged plagiarism. She also mentioned the precision, details, and similarities were "far too strong to be coincidences" while the practice itself was "unethical" and questioned the "integrity" of the entire book.
Subsequently, Bellamy addressed the allegations in two April 29 Instagram Stories.
“I did not plagiarize any recipes in my book, which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years, since falling in love with baking as a child and growing up baking with my mum in our home kitchen,” she claimed.
Brooke Bellamy further added that she opened her first bakery in 2016 and, since October of that year, has been creating her recipes and selling them commercially. In March 2020, Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats published the caramel slice recipe, which used the same ingredients as her own.
However, according to Brooke Bellamy, her recipe came first and four years before Nagi’s. Despite that, she “immediately offered to remove both recipes from future reprints to prevent further aggravation,” the baker added.
Brooke Bellamy even shared an image showing her caramel slice recipe from her channel, dating back to December 2016.
She also mentioned that it was “communicated to Nagi swiftly through discussions,” citing she did so because she had “great respect” for her fellow author and what she has done in recent years for “cooks, content creators, and cookbooks in Australia – especially as a fellow female entrepreneur.”
“Recipe development in today’s world is enveloped in inspiration from other cooks, cookbook authors, food bloggers, and content creators. This willingness to share recipes and build on what has come before is what I love so much about baking and sharing recipes – the community that surrounds it,” Bellamy wrote.
She concluded by standing by her love for baking, her recipes, and the “joy” that her cookbook had provided to home bakers worldwide and their eagerness to recreate her recipes from inside their homes.
Meanwhile, Sally McKenny shared her disappointment regarding the same, and added:
“Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit, especially in a best-selling cookbook.”
Bellamy hasn’t addressed McKenny’s claims. However, in a statement to PEDESTRIAN.TV and TODAY.com, she mentioned that the allegations have been “deeply distressing” for her colleagues and family, and “extremely overwhelming” for her.
Brooke Bellamy doubled down on her Instagram claims that she never copied anybody’s recipes and rather drew inspiration from the classics, alongside her own experience, taste, and passion for baking.
“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,” she noted.
Her book, Bake with Brooki, was published in October 2024 and is priced at $49.99. It has sold more than 69,000 copies as of March, according to Nielsen BookScan.
Notably, Nagi Maehashi’s RecipeTin Eats website is free for all, which has over 1.6 million followers on Instagram. The food blogger has also penned a few cookbooks, including Dinner and RecipeTin Eats: Tonight. The latter topped the Australian Christmas bestseller list last year, with Bake with Brooki securing the second spot.
Nagi has called out the "personal attacks" against Brooke Bellamy despite the "serious" nature of the allegations. She also noted in an Instagram video dated May 1, 2025, that at the end of the day, they were "talking recipes" and dealing with a "business dispute," and people needed to be respectful about the same.
