Set Background Gradient on Button in Swift

I have no idea how to set the background gradient on a button (without making the background gradient an image). This is so different from Android.

Here's a class I have to define a returnable gradient scheme:

import UIKit

extension CAGradientLayer {

    func backgroundGradientColor() -> CAGradientLayer {
        let topColor = UIColor(red: (0/255.0), green: (153/255.0), blue:(51/255.0), alpha: 1)
        let bottomColor = UIColor(red: (0/255.0), green: (153/255.0), blue:(255/255.0), alpha: 1)

        let gradientColors: [CGColor] = [topColor.CGColor, bottomColor.CGColor]
        let gradientLocations: [Float] = [0.0, 1.0]

        let gradientLayer: CAGradientLayer = CAGradientLayer()
        gradientLayer.colors = gradientColors
        gradientLayer.locations = gradientLocations

        return gradientLayer

    }
}

I can use this to set the background of my entire view with the following:

class ViewController: UIViewController {

    override func viewDidLoad() {
        super.viewDidLoad()

        let background = CAGradientLayer().backgroundGradientColor()
        background.frame = self.view.bounds
        self.view.layer.insertSublayer(background, atIndex: 0)
    }
    //...
}

But how can I access the view of the button and insert the sublayer or something like that? I've Googled for a couple hours and can't find anything helpful. I'm pretty lost with this.