Strawberry Jam with Lemon and Black Pepper

As promised, here comes the post on my Sunday-evening jam-session. I think it's a great idea to use leftover fruit for jam. It's not that much of an effort and if you have some glasses of jam in your kitchen cupboard, you always have a small present ready. When making jam, I like to experiment with herbs and spices... strawberries go nicely with peppermint, lemon balm, thyme or chilli. I've successfully used the combination of lemon and black pepper for my butterfly cookies recently and it also works great here - it gives this jam a sour spicy twist.

Recipe
(own creation)

750g strawberries
500g jam sugar
2 lemons
1.5 teaspoons ground black pepper

Wash the strawberries and cut into small pieces. Put them into a large deep pan. Add the grated zest of the two lemons. Then, peel off the rest of the lemons zest and cut the fruit flesh into small pieces also. Add to the berries. Add about 1.5 teaspoons ground black pepper. Put the pan onto the stove, heat up and add half the jam sugar. Bring to boil while constantly stirring. Then, stir in the rest of the jam sugar. Let simmer for about 8 minutes.

Test whether the jam has reached the desired consistency by putting a little drop of it onto a plate. If it's not flowing anymore it's fine. Otherwise cook a little longer.

Fill the boiling jam into cleaned, preheated glasses and seal them. Then turn them upside down for about a minute (kills the fungus spores) and then turn around again and let cool.