Crushing blow for Brooke Bellamy as she’s stripped of ambassador role following allegations she plagiarised recipes from iconic celebrity chef – as the saga takes yet another bizarre twist

Social media baking sensation Brooke Bellamy has been dumped as an ambassador for a young girls in business program in the wake of plagiarism claims.

The federal government funded program cut ties with the Brooki Bakehouse owner after RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi accused her of stealing recipes for her bestselling cookbook Bake With Brooki. 

A fresh twist to the plagiarism row emerged on Wednesday night when award-winning chef/restauranteur Luke Mangan accused Ms Maehashi of not crediting him appropriately for one of his recipes.

Celebrity cook Ms Maehashi first raised explosive allegations about the copyright infringement on Tuesday before Sally McKenney, the US author and blogger behind Sally’s Baking Addiction, came forward with similar claims about Ms Bellamy hours later.

Ms Bellamy has denied the accusations, saying she had been making and selling her recipes well before Ms Maehashi’s were published.

The Brisbane-based Brooki Bakehouse owner was due to be announced as  an ambassador for the Academy for Enterprising Girls.

‘Brooke Bellamy was recently engaged to conduct a small number of promotional activities for the Academy for Enterprising Girls program over the coming months,’ an academy spokesman told The Daily Telegraph.

‘While we make no legal assessment on the allegations aired in the media, we have informed Bellamy that we will not move forward with the engagement at this time.’

Brooke Bellamy (pictured) owns the popular Brooki Bakehouse in Brisbane

RecipeTin Eats’ Nagi Maehashi  (pictured) accused Ms Bellamy of stealing her caramel slice and baklava recipes

Ms Maehashi herself has since come under fire by Mr Mangan, who accused her of not crediting him appropriately for a butter chicken recipe she had used online and in her book. 

‘I couldn’t say off the top of my head whether she did reach out and ask permission or not, but I would have thought, in general, you would contact the person whose recipe it was,’ he said. 

Mr Mangan claimed that he hadn’t been aware Ms Maehashi had used his recipe.

He noted she had credited him but would have preferred a link to his website.

‘All of my recipes in my (seven) books are copyrighted, we own them, they are our intellectual property,’ he said. 

Ms Maehashi adapted Mr Mangan’s butter chicken recipe – adding salt and a low-fat cream option – and referenced the chef in a footnote online.

Mr Mangan wasn’t mentioned in the print copy but it did feature a QR code linking to the online credited version. 

Ms Maehashi’s book includes the statement ‘the author and the publisher have made every effort to contact copyright holders for material used in this book’. 

Celebrity chef Luke Mangan (pictured) has accused Ms Maehashi of not crediting him appropriately for a butter chicken recipe she had used online and in her book

Brooke Bellamy has been accused of stealing recipes for her bestselling cookbook Bake With Brooki (pictured)

Both Mr Mangan and Ms Maehashi were contacted by Daily Mail Australia for comment.  

The plagiarism row erupted on Tuesday when Ms Maehashi posted a series of claims that Ms Bellamy had copied recipes for her million-dollar book Bake With Brooki. 

The allegations relate to Ms Maehashi’s caramel slice and baklava recipe, along with Ms McKenney’s Best Vanilla Cake recipe. 

Ms McKenney posted on social media, saying she was first alerted to the similarity months ago.

She said her recipe was first published in 2019.

‘One of my recipes was also plagiarised in this book and also appears on the author’s YouTube channel,’ she said.

‘Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit – especially in a best selling cookbook.’

Ms Bellamy issued a plea for privacy in the wake of the fresh claims made by Ms McKenney on Wednesday.

‘The past 24 hours have been extremely overwhelming,’ a statement read.

‘II 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.

‘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.’

Bake With Brooki is a bestselling cookbook published by Penguin in October last year and retails for $49.99.

Ms Bellamy quickly became a global sensation after sharing videos on TikTok, which receive millions of views each day.

She is best known for her cookies and has opened pop-up stores in Abu Dhabi and Dubai.

Author Sally McKenney (above) accused Brooke Bellamy of stealing her Vanilla Cake recipe

Ms Maehashi’s (above) accused Ms Bellamy of ‘profiting’ from the alleged plagiarised recipes

Both Penguin and Ms Bellamy deny the allegations.

‘I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years,’ Ms Bellamy said on Tuesday night.

‘In 2016, I opened my first bakery. I have been creating my recipes and selling them commercially since October 2016.’

Ms Bellamy posted an image showing her caramel slice, which dated back to December 2016.

‘On March 2020, RecipeTin Eats published a recipe for caramel slice. It uses the same ingredients as my recipe, which I have been making and selling since four years prior,’ she said. 

While the Brisbane baker insisted she did not copy the recipes, she ‘immediately offered’ to remove both  from future reprints to prevent further aggravation’.

In Ms Maehashi’s Instagram post, she described Ms Bellamy of ‘profiting’ from the alleged plagiarised recipes.

Ms Maehashi claims she first raised concerns with Penguin in December.

‘I put a huge amount of effort into my recipes. And I share them on my website for anyone to use for free,’ she said.

‘To see them plagiarised (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.’

Ms Maehashi is the founder of popular website, RecipeTin Eats, which has 1.5 million followers on Instagram.

She is also the author of award-winning cookbooks Dinner and Tonight.

She and Ms Bellamy could face off next week at the Australian book industry awards  in Melbourne, where their respective bestselling cookbooks have both been nominated for the 2025 Illustrated Book of the Year.

The incredible rise of RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi and her rival Brooke Bellamy who she accused of plagirusm 

The oven gloves are off in a war of words between two of Australia’s baking queens – as allegations of plagiarism bring their recipes under scrutiny. 

Nagi Maehashi, the best-selling author, food blogger and founder of RecipeTin Eats, alleged on Tuesday that baking influencer Brooke Bellamy had plagiarised recipes in her cook book Bake with Brooki – a claim Ms Bellamy and her publisher have denied.  

It comes after both Ms Maehashi and Ms Bellamy enjoyed a meteoric rise in the food blogging space. 

Ms Maehashi was born in Japan but grew up in Sydney. She is a former financier at Brookfield Multiplex and PwC who pivoted to food blogging in 2014.

Ms Maehashi’s cookbooks with Pan Macmillan Australia have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, won industry awards and smashed nonfiction sales records. 

Her wildly popular website RecipeTin Eats, and a Sydney food bank feeding the city’s vulnerable, have only raised her profile further. 

The 47-year-old’s savvy business practice has afforded her a luxury lifestyle that includes a $7million Victorian manor in Hunters Hill, northwest Sydney. 

Her new adversary Brooke Bellamy, nee Saward, also turned to baking later in life. 

Nagi Maehashi (pictured) is a former financier at Brookfield Multiplex and PwC who pivoted to food blogging in 2014

Brooke Bellamy, nee Saward (pictured), is a former travel influencer who ran a blog called World of Wanderlust and published a book by the same name in 2016

US-based baker Sally McKenney claimed on Instagram that Ms Bellamy had also copied her Vanilla Cake recipe

Ms Bellamy is a former travel influencer who ran a blog called World of Wanderlust and published a book by the same name in 2016. 

That year, the 33-year-old returned home to Tasmania and started successful cafe Charlie’s Dessert House, which is now owned and operated by her parents.

In 2021, Ms Bellamy moved to Brisbane with her then-boyfriend, landscape architect Justice Bellamy, and started the bakery Brooki Bakehouse.

Her now husband, Mr Bellamy, hails from the family behind a famous food empire.

He grew up on the family farm where infant formula company Bellamy’s Organic was founded by his parents, David Bellamy and Dooley Crighton-Bellamy, before it was acquired by a Chinese dairy giant for $1.5million.

In Brisbane, Mr Bellamy has been acting as a co-director of Brooki Bakehouse with his wife. The business has garnered a massive social media following off the back of TikTok videos of Ms Bellamy at work in the shop.

But it’s the debut cook book Ms Bellamy published with Penguin last year, Bake with Brooki, that her rival Ms Maehashi has taken issue with. 

Ms Maehashi, who will famously bake dozens of iterations of a treat before putting a recipe online, claims the recipes for Caramel Slice and Baklava in Ms Bellamy’s cook book are nearly identical to the ones she has posted on RecipeTin Eats.

Ms Maehashi will famously bake dozens of iterations of a treat before putting a recipe online

Ms Maehashi claims the recipes for Caramel Slice and Baklava in Ms Bellamy’s cook book are nearly identical to her own

Daily Mail Australia does not suggest that Ms Maehashi’s claims are true.  

‘To me, the similarities are so specific and detailed that calling these a coincidence feels disingenuous,’ she wrote on social media on Tuesday. 

‘There are also recipes from other authors, including from a very well known, beloved cookbook author where the similarities are so extensive, dismissing it as coincidence would be absurd (in my opinion).

‘I’m speaking up because staying silent protects this kind if behaviour.’

Ms Bellamy denied the claims, saying on Instagram: ‘I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years.’

She said she had been making and selling her caramel slice since 2016, whereas RecipeTin Eats published its recipe for the slice in 2020.

Ms Bellamy added she had ‘immediately offered to remove both recipes from future reprints to prevent further aggravation’. 

‘I have great respect for Nagi and what she has done in recent years for cooks, content creators and cookbooks in Australia – especially as a fellow female entrepreneur.’

Ms Bellamy denied the claims, saying on Instagram: ‘I did not plagiarise any recipes in my book which consists of 100 recipes I have created over many years’

‘To me, the similarities are so specific and detailed that calling these a coincidence feels disingenuous,’ Ms Maehashi wrote on social media

Ms Maehashi explained that out of respect for the other authors, she has chosen not to name them or share further details of the allegedly plagiarised recipes.

But a second baker did come forward to echo Ms Maehashi’s plagiarism claims just hours after she posted her statement.

US-based baker Sally McKenney claimed on Instagram that Ms Bellamy had also copied her Vanilla Cake recipe. Ms Maehashi had reached out to her to let her know. 

‘Original recipe creators who put in the work to develop and test recipes deserve credit – especially in a best-selling cookbook,’ Ms McKenney said. 

Penguin has also denied the allegations, saying 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’, according to Ms Maehashi. 

Daily Mail Australia has contacted Ms Maehashi, Ms Bellamy and Penguin for comment.  

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