Kuih Balu

I was out shopping for Chinese New Year goodies when I realised what a joke was made out of my mom's favourite cake.

Mom was making a special lookout for this sort of small tea cake, because my brothers loved it too. It's a shame that I didn't know what it is called, until now. I only remember my aunt used to give a lot of these to us when we were small. Mom said it's called kuih balu, or 鸡蛋糕.


We saw the kuih balu in almost every mall or cake shop we went to.

"Is this kuih balu?" Mom asked.
"No, it's kuih bulu." I answered.
"But it looks like kuih balu to me."
I pointed at the label "Kuih Bulu".

Next shop.

"Look ma, this one's kuih balu on the label."
"Yes, yes, it is."

Next shop.

"This one's kuih baulu, ma."
"Eh?"

Next shop.

"This one's kuih balulu, ma."
"Ehh??"
We burst out laughing.


It turns out that the kuih balu mom's been searching for has its name morphed into several variations. This led me to think about how the spoken language of a language can affect the language itself. One possible combination could be this: someone heard it as kuih balu; the next person as kuih baulu; then another as kuih balulu. Therefore, in the Malay language, there are 4 possible nouns denoting the same tea cake. (Or perhaps more?)

According to a native Indonesian, the original name of the cake is kuih bulu. Then again, how would I know if this is truly original? Others, like my mom, might argue kuih bulu is just but another accidental spoken derivative of kuih balu.

Anyway, that's for linguists to find out.

For now, I'm very contented savouring the fragrant sweetness of my 鸡蛋糕 :P