A social media sensation bakery has issued a grateful message to customers and supporters for standing by it after its influencer owner was accused of plagiarising recipes.
Two high-profile pastry chefs alleged Brisbane baker Brooke Bellamy had copied their recipes for her cookbook, Bake With Brooki, over the past week.
Brooki Bakehouse, thanked customers for their support during the ‘difficult week’ following the allegations.
Ms Bellamy and her staff posted the message on Saturday with a picture of her crew serving customers out of her flagship, Fortitude Valley, Brisbane bakehouse.
‘We’re very grateful for our local community showing up for us this week,’ it read.
‘Brisbane, you’ve been incredible since day one.
‘From all of us here, Brooki.’
The allegations Ms Bellamy stole cookbook recipes first arose on Tuesday.
Brooke Bellamy was accused of stealing recipes for her own cookbook by two authors over the past week
She addressed the controversy with an Instagram story posted to her bakehouse’s page
Australian food blogger and RecipeTin Eats founder Nagi Maehashi levelled the first accusation on Tuesday.
She alleged Ms Bellamy had stolen her caramel slice and baklava recipes in the Bake With Brooki cookbook.
Sally McKenney, of Sally’s Baking Addiction in the United States, then made her own accusation regarding Ms Bellamy’s book.
Ms McKenney contended Ms Bellamy had copied her vanilla cake recipe, after Ms Maehashi tipped her off.
Ms Bellamy has strenuously denied both baker’s claims.
She instead argued many baking classics share similar foundational recipes.
However, she has offered to remove the contentious recipes from future editions of the book.
Many upset baking enthusiasts have taken to social media to weigh in on the controversy.
Nagi Maehashi said Ms Bellamy stole her Baklava recipe for her book Bake With Brooki (above)
Maehashi is the founder of RecipeTin Eats which is also a social media powerhouse
Ms Bellamy has used her bakehouses to evidence her own claims she has been making her allegedly plagiarised recipes for years
Ms Bellamy locked down her own social media accounts on Thursday.
Bakers with similar but unrelated social media accounts were also swept up in the furore.
One Instagram user using the handle @brookies_cookies_au publicly clarified she was not at all affiliated with Ms Bellamy or her businesses.
She received a torrent of misdirected abuse, including one direct message telling her to: ‘f*** off, you thieving b***h’.
‘I’m just a small home baker and this has been overwhelming,’ she wrote in a statement.
‘Please check before you send hate.’
The business, Brooki Bakehouse, is yet to directly address the claims made against Ms Bellamy.
However, Ms Bellamy has used her bakehouses to evidence her own claims she has been making her allegedly plagiarised recipes for years.
‘Please check before you send hate,’ a home baker wrote after receiving misdirected abuse
A law expert said Ms Maehashi would have a tough case to prove if she and rival Brooke Bellamy ended up in court.
Isabella Alexander, a law professor at University of Technology Sydney, told Daily Mail Australia that it was indeed possible to copyright recipes.
‘I guess the answer is yes, a recipe can potentially be protected by copyright law, but it might not give you much protection,’ Ms Alexander said.
‘It would be easier to claim protection for a recipe that was very unusual, unique, or expressed in a very individual way.
‘Where the recipe is quite simple you would be looking for an extremely high level of identity between the original and the alleged copy.’
