This vegan panini is stuffed with creamy cashew cheese, pear slices and fresh rosemary. The perfect toasty lunch for a fall day!

I was hoping to do more vegan cheese experimentation when I created this sandwich. I’m finding it to be incredibly fun and satisfying. If you’re not up to date on my DIY vegan cheese experiments, check out this post and this one. My vegan cashew cream cheese recipe turned out to be one of my most popular posts, so I thought that might be a good starting point. For this recipe, I initially tried adding agar in order to get a more solid cheese, thinking it would make a great brie substitute. With brie in mind, I thought a nice autumn-esque pear panini would be a delicious vegan treat. In the end I decided the agar wasn’t necessary. If you’re versed the world of agar-agar, you’ll know that it’s a vegan ingredient made from algae that is often used as a gelatin substitute. It’s also often used to solidify vegan cheeses. The problem is, it doesn’t melt all that great. Carrageenan is another vegan algae based ingredient that serves lots of the same purposes as agar, with the added benefit of melting, but lots of folks object to carrageenan over possible health concerns . You can get away with agar in some melty vegan cheese recipes, but you won’t always be able to recreate the melting action of dairy cheese.

I wanted something that would make a meltilicious pear and rosemary panini. What was I to do? Nothing! If I was just gonna melt the cheese anyway, why bother solidifying it? Guess what? It worked out perfectly. Added bonus: they were even easier to make. No heating, mixing, waiting to solidify. Could you go the super easy route and use a commercial vegan cream cheese? Probably, but I haven’t tried it so I can’t make any guarantees.

These sandwiches turned out so good. You could seriously feed them to a hardcore omnivore and they’d never know they were eating vegan (not that I advocate that sort of thing). Just a little savory, a little sweet, rich, satisfying, and absolutely perfect for fall.

I probably will do some more vegan cheese work down the road, and some of that will likely include agar. Actually, this is a certainty…I’ve got ideas. Hang around a bit to find out more :)

Print Vegan Pear, Rosemary and Brie Panini This vegan panini is stuffed with creamy cashew cheese, pear slices and fresh rosemary. The perfect toasty lunch for a fall day! Prep Time 5 minutes Cook Time 10 minutes Total Time 15 minutes Servings 2 Author Alissa Ingredients 1/2 batch cashew cream cheese plain - without stir-ins

4 slices of your favorite sandwich bread

1/2 large ripe pear, thinly sliced

2 tbsp. chopped fresh rosemary

1 tsp. maple syrup

handful of arugula

vegan margarine Instructions Heat skillet or frying pan over medium heat. Use margarine to butter one side of each of your four bread slices. Now, take two of those slices and, this is a little tricky/messy, carefully apply an even layer of cashew cheese to the other (unbuttered) side. Now you've got some bread with messy stuff on each side. Nice. Take those two double messy sided pieces and place them, margarine sides down, in skillet. Arrange pear slices on top of cheese. Drizzle pear slices with maple syrup, then sprinkle with rosemary. Top each with a handful of arugula, then with remaining bread slices, margarine side up. Cover skillet if you can. Cook until bottom slices are nicely brown and insides are getting toasty. Flip and repeat on other side.

Sharing is caring!