ABC KidsTwo authors of cooking books accused Tiktok Brooke Bellamy’s influencer of copying their recipes.
Nagi Maehashi, the Australian founder of the Popular Food Repenetin Eats website, said Ms. Bellamy’s cooking book contains recipes with “word similarities with mine”.
Ms. Bellamy, owner of the popular Brooki Bakehouse, rejected her allegations, saying that her book contains “100 recipes that I have created for many years”. One of those in question was created before Ms. Maehashi published hers, she says.
A few hours after Mrs. Maehashi increased her allegations, the American author Sally McKenney also accused Mrs. Bellamy of plagiarizing her vanilla cake recipe.
Ms. Maehashi said that a reader had pointed out what she described as “remarkable similarities” between her caramel slice recipe and that of the best -selling kitchen book in Ms. Bellamy with Brooki.
She said that she had also discovered similarities between her Baklava recipe and that of Mrs. Bellamy, offering a comparison side by side in a press release on the recipe of dishes.
Ms. Maehashi is the author of two cooking books and her website, which she started in 2014, attracts a monthly readership of 45 million pages.
Ms. Bellamy is the owner of three Brooki Bakehouse branches, all in Queensland, which were created in 2022. It is also a popular baker on Tiktok with two million followers.
Ms. Maehashi said that she had contacted Ms. Bellamy’s publisher, Penguin Random House Australia, adding that they “called on lawyers and resorted to what seemed to me legal intimidation”.
“It looks like a blatant exploitation of my work. See them plagiarized and used in a for-profit book, without authorization, and without credit, does not only feel unfair,” she added.
Ms. Maehashi has retained her own legal advisor and wrote to Ms. Bellamy and Penguin.
RetaisBake with Brooki was published in October 2024 and has since sold $ 4.6 million (2.1 million pounds sterling; $ 2.9).
Penguin and Ms. Bellamy both lived the accusations, the publisher publishing an answer to Ms. Maehashi confirming “The recipes of the BWB book were written by Brooke Bellamy”.
Despite no reprehensible act, Ms. Bellamy said that she had proposed to withdraw the revenue from future reprints “to avoid a new worsening”, and that this was communicated “quickly” to Ms. Maehashi.
She added that she had “great respect for Nagi”, but supported her recipes in a series of Instagram stories.
“The development of recipes in today’s world is inspired by other cooks, cooking books, food bloggers and content creators,” she said, adding that the “desire to share recipes” is what she likes in cooking.
The cooking books of Ms. Maehashi and Ms. Bellamy were selected for the Australian Book Industry Awards of this year.
Ms. McKenney, who reveals the Sally’s Baking Addiction website, accused Ms. Bellamy of copying her vanilla cake recipe, which is included in the kitchen book and the Youtube channel of Ms. Bellamy.
“The creators of original recipes who have put the work to develop and test the recipes deserve credit – especially in a best -selling kitchen book,” wrote Mskenny on Instagram.
