Traditional Devon Cream Tea Strawberry Jam - Strawberry Conserve - cooking recipe

Ingredients

2 lbs small strawberries, left whole or 2 lbs large strawberries, halved
2 lbs sugar or 2 lbs preserving sugar
1 lemon, juice of

Preparation

Place alternate layers of cleaned and hulled strawberries with the sugar into a non metallic bowl; add the lemon juice, but only if you are NOT using the preserving sugar, cover and leave to stand overnight.
Next day, transfer the fruit and sugar to a pan, bring slowly to the boil and simmer for 5 minutes. Pour back into the bowl, cover and leave again for another day.
Finally, transfer to a preserving pan, bring to the boil and simmer until setting point is reached - this takes about 10 minutes. Remove from the heat and leave to cool a little until the conserve JUST starts to set, this takes about 15 minutes. Stir once more to distribute the fruit evenly and pour into prepared hot sterilised jars and cover immediately.
Makes about 3 lb of conserve.
Only add the lemon juice if you are using normal granulated sugar and NOT preserving sugar, which contains pectin already.