CakeEmail: getting error using example from Cake Book

Asked this on Q&A also, but aren't sure which is more accurate/
appropriate place...

New to Cake and trying to learn by implementing some basic
functions... Trying out the CakeEmail function and getting the
following error:

Fatal error: Call to a member function send() on a non-object
in /var/www/app/Model/Request.php on line 241

Called from the Request controller like this:

$this->Request->sendEmail(); // Send a confirmation email

Request Model method looks like this:

App::uses('AppModel', 'Model');
App::uses('CakeEmail', 'Network/Email');

// ... bunch of other functions

public function sendEmail() {
$email = new CakeEmail('gmail');
$email->from(array('my@email.com' => 'MySite.com'))
->to('my@email.com')
->subject('Request Created')
->message('Your request created successfully')
->send('My Message');

}

New to this so it's probably something basic... But I'm out of ideas.
Thanks in advance for the help

PS: also created the email.php as described...

public $gmail = array(
'host' => 'ssl://smtp.gmail.com',
'port' => 465,
'username' => 'my@email.com',
'password' => 'not telling',
'transport' => 'Smtp'
);

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