http://miftyisbored.com/a-complete-login-and-authentication-application-tutorial-for-cakephp-2-3/

This site is by a multi-talented developer that sometimes Blogs about CakePHP. The good thing about it is he includes listings for the structure of the database tables and the content of the Model View and Controller files, plus a zip of the actual code.

I'm finding that the ability of CakePHP to "bake" the default CRUD (Create, Read, Update Delete) views and actions lets you get 80% of the way to a result. You only have to code the remaining 80% yourself.

The documentation of CakePHP is very comprehensive. I'm noticing that,  as CakePHP develops the way things are done can change (for the better). You just have to take notice of the "Deprecation" warnings in the doucmentation.

I love the 'cake way'. If you conform to a certain database design elements you get many features 'auto-magically' created for you. And how basic utility classes are available in cake core to achieve what you would typically want to in a web application. (e.g. Encryption, Hashing, Utility String, Time/Date classes etc etc etc).