Tutti-Frutti Brandied Fruits

When I was poking around on the Times website the other day, looking for the tutti-frutti ice cream recipe that turned out to be fruit ice cream, I found something else called tutti-frutti. And the funny thing? I recognized the "clipping". My mother has that clipping, from the original paper, not an electronic pdf clipping. And it's something she used to make. But we never called it tutti-frutti - we just called it brandied fruits.
The gist of it is that you start in June with a bottle of brandy, and a bunch of strawberries (and sugar). As the summer goes on, add fruit in season (and sugar). At summer's end, put it away until Christmas. It turns into an unsightly brown sludge, but it tastes awesome. You then put some in jars and give it away as presents, and eat the rest over vanilla ice cream.

I think I'll try some this year.

The Times recipe (#2 in the clipping) calls for 1 750 ml bottle of brandy, 10 pounds of fruit, 7 pounds of sugar, and a 3 gallon crock. Start with the brandy, and add fruit and sugar. For each pound of fruit, use 3/4 pound of sugar. Use soft fruits, like berries, grapes, peaches and plums. Don't use bananas or citrus or apples. Pears would probably be good; the printed recipe calls for pineapple. Keep the fruit submerged with a weighted plate. Eat it when it's ready.

And if I haven't sated your desire for tutti-frutti yet, someone's making scratch & sniff wallpaper called Tutti Frutti and of course, Little Richard sang it.