Bun in the oven: pregnant Brooki shows receipts as recipe feud heats up
It’s the monster cookie story consuming the internet: has the nation’s #1 cookbook author taken recipes from others without proper attribution? Now chef Bill Granger’s name has been thrown into the mix.
It’s the monster cookie story that has consumed the nation: has Brooke Bellamy of Bake With Brooki taken recipes from other cookbooks, including Nagi Maehashi’s wildly popular RecipeTin Eats, without proper attribution?
Even if she did, how much pressure should the young cook really be under? Her lawyer revealed on Wednesday that she is four months pregnant, and trying to “reduce stress in her life.”
The heat has certainly been on the pink-cheeked, red-haired Gen Y baker, who insisted on Wednesday: “I do not copy other people’s recipes.”
A US-based cook, Sally McKenney of Sally’s Baking Addiction, stirred the pot by backing Nagi in the #cakegate dispute, saying that Brooki’s book contained a recipe for a “best ever” vanilla cake that was very similar to her own vanilla cake recipe.
McKenney said she recognised it as her own, because her recipe contains an unusual ingredient – buttermilk – which is a bit of a signature.
The Australian has seen a letter from Nagi to Brooki, in which she references “comparisons with of one of your recipes with Bill Granger’s.”
Granger, of the world-famous Bill’s cafes, died in 2023, and his estate has not yet commented on #cakegate.
In a statement, Brooki’s lawyer, Damian Kelly, who is special counsel at Wilkinson Butler, said: “While Brooke was not keen to raise this matter, and it has no bearing on the story itself, we feel it prudent to provide context. Brooke is four months pregnant and, as much as possible for a driven businesswoman, is focused on managing and reducing stress in her life.”
In the same statement, Brooki said: “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.
“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.
“My priority right now is to ensure the welfare of the fantastic team at Brooki Bakehouse and that of my family.”
The baby-pink Bake with Brooki recipe guide was upon release the nation’s No. 1 cookbook. Brooki told The Australian overnight that she had been making the contested caramel slice since at least December 2016, and – icing on the cake – she provided an Instagram snap of the slice (surely now Exhibit A in any legal dispute) on a laden table, with the date attached.
Her rival in cookbooks, megaseller Nagi Maehashi of RecipeTin Eats says Brooki took the caramel slice recipe, and a baklava recipe, without permission.
In a note to The Australian, Brooki said she had provided Nagi’s legal team with evidence of her own caramel slice baking “upon their first contact.”
“In 2016, I opened my first bakery. In March 2020, RecipeTin Eats published a recipe for caramel slice,” she said.
“It uses the same ingredients as my recipe, which I have been making and selling since four years prior.”
The Australian does not suggest that Brooki (or Nagi) took anyone’s recipe, only that the allegation has been made.
The dispute may sound like a storm in a cupcake, but there’s serious dough at stake.
Nagi’s debut cookbook, RecipeTin: Eats (Dinner) has sold more than 350,000 copies, and her follow up, RecipeTin: Eats (Tonight) has sold 337,000 copies.
At a RRP of $49.99, that’s more than $34 million in sales.
Brooki is fast catching up, with almost 100,000 copies of the baby-pink Bake With Brooki sold since it was launched in October 2024.
Brooki also sells cute “merch” including oven mitts, and those massive water bottles so popular with the young.
With her smiley face, accessible ingredients, and failsafe, simple recipes, Nagi is a favourite of Gen X and Millennial home cooks, who need to whip up tasty meals on a budget.
Brooki’s baby-pink cookbook is a favourite with Gen Y, who go nuts for her NYC cookie boxes. She recently opened a pop-up in Dubai, and the queue for cookies went around the block. It’s not uncommon to see young girls screaming with pleasure outside her “bakehouses.”
Things have been frosty between the two cooks since December, when one of Nagi’s devoted readers alerted her to similarities between the two caramel slice recipes.
Nagi says she didn’t want to stir up trouble, but says lawyers for Penguin Random House, which publishes Brooki, refused to take her complaint seriously. Penguin Random House had, at time of writing, not offered a statement in defence of their star author.
Nagi’s post has attracted thousands of supportive comments.
“I’m no stranger to seeing my recipes being 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,” she said.
Nagi has engaged Simpsons, a law firm specialising in intellectual property, who by chance are a sponsor of the Australian Book Industry Awards.
Both Nagi and Brooki are up for ABIA awards this year, with the winner to be announced in May.
Nagi said: “It’s not about the number – it’s about the principle. Rewarding shortcuts devalues the hard work of every original creator who does things the right way. And let’s not forget – this is not a small book gathering dust in the dark corner of bookshops. This has been a blockbuster launched with a big marketing campaign. $4.6 million worth of sales in Australia alone, in less than six months.”
It is not clear that recipes can in fact be plagiarised, and in any case, plagiarism is not illegal. It is considered unethical, but there are no criminal penalties to be applied.
Accusing a rival of plagiarism is extremely actionable, in the court of defamation.
Some recipes may attract copyright protection, but this hasn’t been tested by the Australian courts.
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