EXHIBITS

This yearbook photograph shows the girls of Phi Upsilon Omicron baking fruitcakes in the 1940s.

(Utah State University Buzzer Yearbooks Collection, 1948, p. 141, https://digitalcommons.usu.edu/buzzer/)

This page from a Phi Upsilon Omicron scrapbook commemorates a fruitcake bake from 1970s.

(Kappa Chapter of Phi Upsilon Omicron papers, Phi Upsilon Omicron Scrapbook, found in Utah State University Special Collections, Box 5, Folder 2, p. 116)

Finally, there was fruitcake.

The annual Fruitcake Bake was a service project that first took place in the 1930s; it became a tradition spanning four decades or more.[1] The members of Phi Upsilon Omicron used the proceeds to help in various ways; most commonly the money assisted a promising home economics student pay for her education.[2]

The Utah State University Student Newspaper summarized the Fruitcake Bake as follows: “Each year the girls of the [Phi Upsilon Omicron] organization take a recipe, make improvements on it, then begin to mix and bag.” Below is an example of a fruitcake recipe which members of Phi Upsilon Omicron might have used and improved in the 1970s:

Walnut Jewel Fruitcake

¾ cup dried apricots

¾ cup water

1 ½ cups granulated sugar

¾ cup sifted all-purpose flour

½ teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

¾ cup sifted pitted read-to-eat prunes

¾ cup pitted dates

¾ cup candied cherries

3 cups Diamond Walnut halves and large pieces

3 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla

Simmer apricots in water five minutes. Add ¾ cup sugar and cook slowly 10 minutes longer, until apricots are transparent and glazed. Lift out of syrup with a fork: drain well on wire rack. Resift flour with remaining ¾ cup sugar, baking powder and salt. Combine prunes, dates, cherries, walnuts and apricots. Add to fruit mixture and mix carefully to avoid breaking up fruit. Turn into greased 9-inch square pan. Bake at 300 degrees F. about 1½ hours, or until cake is set in center. Cool in pan. Serve plain or glazed. Makes one 9-inch cake.