Cactus jam

Imagine: New Year, guests at the table, you serve dessert, and, so casually, say: "But try cactus jam, this year it didn't turn out bad, not like last year." The guests are out, you are honored and praised, and the eternal envy of friends. Yes, of course you can buy anything in the store, but you also need to bring everything to mind. You can also buy cactus jam, but you need to be able to cook it yourself. In this culinary recipe, not even a recipe, but a delicacy, the most important thing is to find suitable cacti. After all, you can not cook this jam from ordinary cacti from the windowsill.
For this purpose, the fruits of prickly pear are well suited, they taste like strawberries, and jam is cooked from them, and baked and eaten fresh. But there is another very interesting cactus, there are not even two – melocactus, it is also called candy cactus, and echinocactus. Here they definitely make jam from them, not from fruits, but from themselves. So, the stems are very carefully, with a knife and fork, cleaned of prickles and skin, covered with sugar and boiled over low heat until boiling. Remove from the fire, wait for complete cooling and put back on the fire. Cool again, add lemon juice and boil again, filter and in jars.