Hello Fellow Bakers!

My rum cake is fighting me when it comes to getting it all moist and sticky/soaked with syrup. I have tried every way under the sun it seems to get the syrup to penetrate the cake, to no avail. No matter how many holes I poke, no matter what direction I do it from, no matter how long I wait for it to absorb between doses, I end up with a cake that is sticky and perfect about a centimeter around the edges on all sides, and a totally bone dry middle (not bone dry as in a bad texture; the texture is actually quite good and moist. I just can't seem to get the syrup to reach the deep middle of the cake layer no matter what I do).

What kind of hacks can I try here? I'm looking into an injector or something like that, but don't want to buy it if it's not going to work still. Does anyone have any tried and true methods to getting the syrup to travel down into the heart of the cake? As of right now the only way I'm able to get the sticky texture I want is to cut it into slices and individually brush the syrup over each slice.

Help!