How do I call an element from a helper in CakePHP 2.x?

In CakePHP both helpers and elements are great ways to reuse code at the view level. I tend to use helpers more for OO style functionality and elements more for reusable chunks of HTML. In this case I have a stack of elements with a common wrapper (provided by the helper) and wanted pass the desired element as an arguemnt into the helper method. As we are no longer in the view $this->element(); is out of scope. A quick search of the API documentation (http://api.cakephp.org/2.6/class-Helper.html) revealed this is stored as a protected property; $this->_View->element(); should do the trick.

From the documentation:

$_View protected View

The View instance this helper is attached to

Implementation example:

<?php

App::uses('AppHelper', 'View/Helper');

class PanelHelper extends AppHelper{

    public function panel($element, $options){

        $wrapper = null;
        //do stuff with options....
                $wrapper .= "<strong>{$options['name']}</strong>";
        $wrapper .= $this->_View->element($element);

        return $wrapper
    }
}

Usage example:

<?php
    echo $this->PanelHelper('helper', array('name'=>'some name'));