Brooke Bellamy has denied claims made by a second author accusing the Brisbane-based baker, cafe owner and author of plagiarism.
US-based Sally McKenney, of SallysBakeBlog, who has 1 million followers on Instagram, alleged that one of her cake recipes had been copied in Bellamy’s Bake With Brooki.
Brooke Bellamy, author of Bake With Brooki.
McKenney’s post on Wednesday came a day after the founder of food website RecipeTin Eats, Nagi Maehashi, went public with allegations that Bellamy, owner of three cafes in Brisbane, copied two of McKenney’s recipes in the book published by Penguin.
“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 plagiarised in this book and also appears on the author’s YouTube channel,” McKenney wrote. “Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit – especially in a bestselling cookbook.”
Maehashi, a Good Food columnist, claimed in an Instagram post on Wednesday that the similarities with two of her own recipes “are so specific and detailed that calling these a coincidence feels disingenuous”. The recipes in question are the caramel slice and baklava.
Bellamy had strenuously denied the claims made by Maehashi in a story on her Instagram account. “I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years,” she wrote.
This masthead does not suggest the accusations of plagiarism are true, only that they have been made.
Bellamy, who is four months pregnant, released a second statement through her lawyers this afternoon.
“The past 24 hours have been extremely overwhelming. 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,” it read.
“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.”
The statement 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.”
Publisher Penguin has been contacted by this masthead for comment.
According to a post on Maehashi’s Instagram page, Penguin has denied the plagiarism allegations, “stating (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’.”
Bake With Brooki was published in October last year and, according to Nielsen BookScan, sold 69,000 copies as of March 2025.
The author’s debut cookbook is shortlisted in this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards for Illustrated Book of the Year. Maehashi’s book, RecipeTin Eats: Dinner, is short-listed in the same category. The winners will be announced next week.
Gary Pengelly, CEO of Books and Publishing and co-presenter of the Australian Book Industry Awards, said in a statement that “any shortlisted book that is found, after due process, to no longer be eligible may be withdrawn from the award shortlists”.
He said award shortlists were the result of independent voting by publishers, booksellers, media and other book industry stakeholders. Nominated books were held to stringent eligibility rules, as follows: authors, illustrators and narrators must be an Australian citizen, permanent resident or humanitarian visa holder, and books need to be published in the last 12 months.
As this dispute has not yet been resolved, the Australian Book Industry Awards will monitor the situation.
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