Expected time to prepare: 40 minutes pastrywork, 90 minutes bake (of which you need 20 minutes of saucepan time to make the honey-lemon syrup), then three or four hours to cool.
Scoville rating: roughly 50 Scoville.
Oh, well, almost infinite. Not recommended for the faint of heart or the high of cholesterol.
CAUTION: BAKLAVA is a VERY intense food. If you are unfamiliar
with extreme cooking, you should consider having baklava
prepared by an expert before attempting it on your own.
CAUTION: BAKLAVA HONEY SYRUP when cooking is a supersaturated
solution, not boiling even though well above the nominal boiling
point and can go into superheat boiling unexpectedly. If you
stop stirring it, boiling
WARNING: BAKLAVA is an extremely unhealthy food.
You shouldn't eat it. Not one bit. Because you'll like it sooooo much,
you'll have to have another piece. And another. And...
Start off by making the filling. Mix the 1.5 cups of sugar with the raisins and the nuts. Add a teaspoon of cinnamon.
Butter the inside of a medium-sized rectangular cake pan. Use solid butter, not the melted stuff.
Open the pastry leaves. The leaves are VERY thin sheets of dough, stacked up, then rolled up inside the plastic bag inside the box. The leaves dry out in like 30 seconds if not covered with a damp towel, so have the damp towel ready.
The leaves tend to stick together if given any excuse. Don't pinch them together. Sometimes a knife blade can separate the leaves if they're being uncooperative.
Separate out a leaf.
Butter the part of the leaf in the pan. Use the melted butter and a pastry brush.
Fold the long overhang back into the pan. Butter the top.
If a leaf tears, don't panic. Put it in the pan as best you can, butter it down, and carry on. Likewise for stuck leaves; do the best you can, butter it, and carry on. You will _never_ notice if you have some stuck leaves (yes, I've tested it and you don't).
Repeat till you have put six or so leaves (twelve layers or so, since one leaf usually has top be folded onto itself once to fit the pan) of fillo leaves into the pan.
Make sure you butter at each opportunity.
Now use a big spoon and spoon out about a third of the nuts-n-raisins (plus sugar and cinnamon) onto the surface of the buttered pastry. You'll get about 50% coverage. That's fine.
Repeat with six or so more leaves; then another layer of nuts-n-raisins, then six more leaves, then the last of the nuts and raisins, then the last six leaves.
You should have now used up all the pastry leaves in your package, since they seem to put about 24 leaves in a one-pound box.
Set the oven to 325 degrees (yes, it's a low oven. You're going to heatsoak the pastry, not bake it fast.)
While the oven heats, get out a sharp knife and a straightedge. Cut the pastry from one corner to the other of the pan, all the way from the top to the bottom. Make sure the cut goes all the way to the bottom of the pan.
Now, cut parallel to the original diagonal cut, about an inch away, on each side of the diagonal cut. Make sure you go all the way to the bottom.
Repeat the diagonal and parallel cutting on the other pan diagonal. Yes, it's OK to use your fingers to keep the pastry from riding up on the knife blade. You now have a bunch of one-inch-or-so diamond-shaped pastries, all arranged neatly in a pan.
Put the pan into the oven, top rack. If it's an electric oven, put a "diffuser" on the rack below the pan. An old (single-thick) cookie sheet works well, but a sheet of aluminium foil a tad larger than the pastry pan is adequate. All you need to do is shield the bottom of the pastry pan from the direct radiant heat of the heating element.
Set a timer for 1 hour, 15 minutes.
Now, prepare the syrup. Mix the 3 cups sugar and 2 cups water in a large saucepan. Boil. Add the 1 cup honey. Watch out for superheat events- keep stirring! Use a wooden or plastic stirrer. Add the lemon and cinnamon- and be careful when you do, as this almost always causes some frothing.
Boil for fifteen minutes. Then remove from heat, cover, and put in a safe place to cool. Watch out, it's superheated and will cause a nasty second-degree burn if you spill it.
When the timer rings on the 1 hour 15 minutes, check the pastry. You want the top to be the color of perfectly cooked toast. If it's still too white, you can turn the heat up to 350 or so and give it another ten minutes. (yes, the pastry is supposed to be making those hissing, spitting, crackling sounds as it cooks)
When the color is what you want, remove the pan from the oven and IMMEDIATELY pour the honey-lemon syrup over the pastry. You will hear a buckling and roaring sound as the syrup goes into repeated vapor/liquid phase shifts; the metal pan may well buckle from the differential heating as the liquid reaches bottom. Don't let it scare you; it's supposed to do that.
Put the whole pan aside for at least two hours to cool and allow the syrup to adsorb into the pastry.
Cover with aluminium foil after an hour or so, if you want.
Serve when it's cool to the touch.
Baklava will keep several days without refrigeration, which is good because it doesn't taste nearly as good cold as it does at room temperature