Instructions:
Place the function call in wherever you want the recent posts to appear.
<?php get_recent_posts(); ?>

Configuration:
You may pass parameters when calling the function to configure some of the options.
Example: get_recent_posts(10, '', '<br />', true, 5)

The parameters:
$no_posts - sets the number of recent posts to display
$before - text to be displayed before the link to the recent post
$after - text to be displayed after the link to the recent post
$show_pass_post - whether or not to display password protected posts
$skip_posts - allows skipping of a number of posts before showing the number of posts specified with the $no_posts parameter
$show_excerpts - allows the post excerpt to be output after the post title