The Traditional Kuehs of Brunei

According to my gym instructor friend, one of the questions that he had to study for the Brunei nationality exam was - 'what is the difference between the wet cakes (kueh basah) and dry cakes (kueh kering)?' - and - 'name the two types'. This former is a rather tough question to answer and to find the definitive list of Brunei kuehs without knowing where to look is also equally tough. I wrote a little bit about Brunei kuehs a while ago (link here) but since I now have a book with me describing the list of Brunei kuehs, I thought I will revisit the subject.

Dewan Bahasa and Pustaka published a book entitled the Traditional Cakes of Brunei - in Malay in 1986 (which has ran out) and reprinted it in English very recently. I got my copy from s@s (thanks s@s!) very recently. The book contained all the traditional cakes or kuehs of Brunei and divided them into wet and dry ones. So you would automatically know which one is which. By the way - the answer to what is the difference between the two is that the dry ones keep for very long and the wet ones, you have to eat more or less straight away.

The book is actually a cookbook and it described how each kueh is made. Since many of the Brunei kuehs require special utensils, there is also a whole section of specialised Brunei moulds of which I have never known existed before. For instance to make buahulu (spelling as given), there are about 5 different types of moulds including big sized flower mould, sakah-sakah mould and horse shaped mould. There are other types of moulds for the other kuehs such as the madu kesirat mould, pengangan papan mould and the sapit mould. Other utensils described include the pangantulan katu mayang, palinggangan and the palitan. The descriptions of each one and the pictures are included in the book.

If you ever wanted how to make Brunei kuehs, the recipes of each and every single Brunei kueh is in the book. Though I have to admit, something got lost in the translation. For instance, to make ardam it says 'wash rice, soak in water for 2 hours and drip away' - drip away? I would like to see what the Malay version actually says. The recipes did not state how many pieces of kuehs can be made from the amount of ingredients that is stated. The recipe for Kueh Jala requires 1.8 kg rice and 1.5 kg sugar. I don't know much about cooking but 3.3 kg worth of something would make a lot of Kueh Jala!

Despite that, the book is very useful - even if you will never be cooking or making any of the kuehs - it's probably a lot easier to buy small quantites at the tamu - the book does provide wonderful knowledge about the traditional Brunei kuehs and hence the Brunei culture and heritage as well. Go to Dewan Bahasa and get a copy.