En el controlador, escribimos:
use Cake\I18n\Time;
public function correctTransaction()
{
setlocale(LC_TIME, 'es_VE', 'es_VE.utf-8', 'es_VE.utf8');
date_default_timezone_set('America/Caracas');
$initialDate = new Time();
debug($initialDate);
$initialDate
->year(2018)
->month(8)
->day(31)
->hour(0)
->minute(0)
->second(0);
debug($initialDate);
}