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Cakes on Walnut

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Address: 114 N Walnut St. Champaign, IL 61820
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Amanda and Trisha Bates were sisters long before they became best friends.

Nearly five years apart, the girls were never at an age in their youth when their interests were similar enough to become friends. When Amanda was into coloring and playing outside, Trisha was still a toddler; when Trisha was into coloring and playing outside, Amanda was into make-up and hanging out with friends.

But they did become friends ­— eventually best friends — after the many years of childhood blurred into adulthood.

It would be easy to use the word “inseparable” in order to emphasize how much they talk, how they agree on most everything, how they travel coast to coast with each other, how many experiences they have had together, but that isn’t the case. The girls haven’t lived in the same city for more than a few months since Amanda left to attend the University of Illinois at 18, almost exactly 10 years ago. In fact, they are separated best friends.

The sisters still do not live together: Amanda lives in Harrisburg, Penn., where she works for Caterpillar, and Trisha lives in Champaign after graduating from the University of Illinois, just like her older sister. But they do have a place together, one created for just the reason of bringing them together.

It is not an apartment or a condo or a house — it is their business: Cakes on Walnut.

Today, they are there together, at the cupcake shop they opened nearly seven months ago in downtown Champaign. But they are never very far apart — they have talked nearly 10 times a day on the phone or through e-mail since Amanda last left.

“The bottom line is that we just wanted a business together,” says Trisha, sitting on a tall white chair with thin metal legs.

“We didn’t really think about what we were good at or what we could do really well, we just wanted something together and went for it,” Amanda says of their decision to open Cakes on Walnut; the business is strictly cupcakes.

“We don’t know any of that other stuff,” says Trisha on her knowledge of baking. “But we know cupcakes.”

They have definitely come a long way since the days of fighting over the bathroom in their home in Roanoke, Va., population 1,200.

Their parents, Jan and Jim, who still live in that house, played referees when their daughters got physical over whose turn it was in the bathroom. “For a couple of years, when Amanda was in high school and Trisha was in 6th or 7th grade,” their mom says, “they fought a lot.”

“We would give anything to share a bathroom now,” says Amanda, looking at her younger sister, knowing very well that both of them want to live in the same city again, in the same home again. Despite their cupcake business, that place will not be Champaign. The girls are soon visiting Seattle to check out the possibility of opening another business — because to stay in one place doing the same thing is not an option for them as of now.

Despite the distance between them, the sisters marvel at how close they have become. Trisha is more laid-back but completely independent, as she manages the business on her own in Champaign. Amanda is more intense, a go-getter and is always the one meeting people, making contacts, finding suppliers and researching.

“If Amanda calls me and says she is sure of something, I just trust her,” says Trisha. “Without each other, the business just wouldn’t be.”

“She’s the only person I would ever start a business with,” says Amanda, speaking over the unlikely harmonies of running water, electric blenders and Alanis Morissette.

“We wanted a patio, the architects said no, but we got it. We wanted a glass window so you could see into the kitchen, the architects said no, but we got it,” says Trisha, still holding some frustration from the building process. “We don’t take no for an answer anymore. There’s always a solution we can figure out on our own.”

They started the business plan while they were together in Harrisburg, the first time they had lived together as adults for an extended time.

“We fought for maybe the first three weeks,” says Trisha. “But we have always fought for a little bit when we first have to acclimate to each other’s lives.”

After more laughter, astrology comes up. “We were all about horoscopes for a while,” says Trisha, knowing very well that many people think astrology is just plain ridiculous. For the sisters, it has proved to be eerily accurate.

Amanda is a Scorpio, born Nov. 11, 1980: very cool and very determined, sometimes a workaholic, best as an adviser to others, observes and analyzes others better than any other, usually has two sources of income. Trisha is a Pisces, born March 4, 1985: adventurous, impulsive, curious, ambitious, a lover of freedom, open to new ideas, a pioneer in thought and action, a true traveler.

“We are definitely chameleons,” says Trisha.

“The minute you define us, we’ll change,” adds Amanda in agreement.

Not surprisingly, both Pisces’ and Scorpio’s main quality is mutability. “I think we are actually each other’s best matches,” says Trisha, laughing.

As the astrology book says clearly: They complete each other.