This is how I do it. You may want to reset and call it as a function in case you want to reuse.
// Most Recent
function nt_mostrecent( $count ) {
$my_query = new WP_Query( array(showposts => $count, order => 'DSC', orderby => 'date'));
while ($my_query->have_posts()) : $my_query->the_post();
$posts .= '<a href="' . get_permalink() . '">' . get_the_title() . '</a>';
endwhile;
return $posts;
wp_reset_query();
}