Brisbane baker and Brooki Bakehouse founder Brooke Bellamy has returned to social media and provided an update, after she was accused of plagiarising recipes by RecipeTin Eats author Nagi Maehashi.
The baker and Bake with Brooki author posted a video to Instagram on May 25, after taking a few weeks off to “pause and reflect”, where she took her followers through a day at the bakery.
In a voice-over, she explained that she “never had such long breaks between videos” and “never experienced something like I have over the last few weeks”.
“All my life, I have dreamed of owning my own business, and because I love eating sweets and learning how to make them, I opened my own bakery a few years ago,” the baker and content creator explained.
The business owner said she travelled the world searching for the best bakeries before this and was “inspired and influenced” by many bakers and businesses.
“But the biggest inspiration in my life is my mum, because I learned to cook and bake with her in the kitchen growing up, and when I was invited to write a cookbook, I was really excited to share all of the recipes I’ve been making since I was small,” she said.
“The recipes have been written down on paper, been handed to me by friends and family, they get passed down through generations, they get scaled up and scaled down in the bakery setting, and while all of these recipes are personal to me, I cannot say that I have invented the cookies, cupcakes, brownies or cakes in the recipe book. They are all inspired from somewhere and someone before me.”
She then directly addressed the allegations.
“I never subscribed to be a part of a narrative that pits two women against each other, especially in the same industry. I think there’s room for everyone, especially women in business,” the Brooki Bakehouse owner said.
“I guess that’s all I’m gonna say about it, because food for me has, and always will be, inherently a shared experience.”
Always updating her followers about her business and taking them behind the scenes, Brooke said she enjoyed sharing her journey and work online, as well as the recipes that shaped her.
She ended by saying it was time to return to the bakery and continue sharing her work.
The video coincided with the business’s third birthday, where she shared another reel of celebrations at one of her stores.
Also speaking to 9News on the day of the celebration, she said she could not speak about the allegations because other parties were involved.
In her reel prior to that, she said she was grateful for her team and the followers who joined her on her business journey.
Not only that, but she also shared that she was planning to open her fourth and fifth Brooki Bakehouse stores, was getting ready to move into another test kitchen and warehouse, and was having another baby.
Brooke currently has three stores in Queensland at the Brisbane Airport, Chermside, and Fortitude Valley.
What did RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi accuse Bake with Brooki of?
The update follows after Nagi beat Brooke in this year’s Australian Book Industry Awards earlier this month, where they were nominated in the Illustrated Book of the Year category, for their books RecipeTin Eats: Tonight and Bake with Brooki.
In late April, the RecipeTin Eats author made allegations that her caramel slice and baklava recipes were plagiarised in Brooke’s book, which she has denied.
“I’m no stranger to seeing my recipes copied online,” Nagi posted in an Instagram post on April 29. “But seeing what appeared to be my recipes printed in a book launched with a huge publicity campaign from one of Australia’s biggest publishers was shocking.”
At the time, she also provided side-by-side screenshots comparing the measurements, wording, and the dates the recipes were published. According to the screenshots, Nagi’s caramel slice and baklava recipes were published in 2020 and 2018, and Brooke’s book was published in late 2024.
Nagi then said in another statement on her Instagram stories that she “tried” and went back and forth with Brooke and her publisher for six months and hired lawyers.
“I have nothing to gain out of speaking up, except that I believe it’s the right thing to do. I do not want their money. I didn’t even ask for reimbursement of legal fees,” she said.
“Reminder: I did not make the statement lightly and without doing serious groundwork.”
What else did Bake with Brooki’s Brooke Bellamy say about the allegations?
Following the allegations, Brooke posted a series of Instagram stories, where she said she offered to remove the recipes from future reprints of Bake with Brooki.
“I have been creating my recipes and selling them commercially since October 2016,” she wrote in a statement.
She also wrote that Nagi’s recipe did not appear online until four years later, but the RecipeTin Eats founder shared a screenshot on her Instagram stories showing it was archived in April 2016.
“I did not plagiarise 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,” the author said on Instagram.
In a separate statement to Pedestrian TV in early May, she said the ordeal was “distressing” for her colleagues and family.
“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,” she said.
“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.”
Her publisher, Penguin Random House, also denied the plagiarism claims.
“Our client respectfully rejects your client’s allegations and confirms that the recipes in the BWB Book were written by Brooke Bellamy,” a spokesperson said.
