Ross Cornell

This plugin adds a simple widget that allows you to display a number of recent blog posts from a specific category. You have the options to choose a title, category, number of posts and whether or not to show the post date. The posts will be ordered by date just like the default Recent Posts widget included with WordPress.

very easy to use

Very usefull

Just like the default Recent Posts widget except you can choose a category to pull posts from.

Prasanna SP

This plugin creates a new widget which lets you show a list of recent posts based on categories or tags. This is a must have plugin if you want to exclude some categories in recent posts widget or if you want to show recent posts based on tags. By default the wordpress recent posts widget shows a posts from all category. But this plugin gives you more power to customize your recent posts widget. You can also display post date in the widget.
See the live action of this plugin on <a href="http://demo.prasannasp.net/custom-recent-posts-widget/" rel="nofollow ugc">demo site</a> or on Kennneth John Odle’s <a href="http://blog.kjodle.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">blog</a>.
Have any questions or suggestions? Create a thread in the <a href="http://forum.prasannasp.net/forum/plugin-support/custom-recent-posts-widget/" rel="nofollow ugc">support forum</a>.
Visit <a href="http://www.prasannasp.net/wordpress-plugins/" rel="nofollow ugc">this page</a> for more WordPress Plugins from the developer.
A special thanks to <a href="http://blog.kjodle.net/" rel="nofollow ugc">Ken</a> and <a href="http://www.joshlobe.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Josh</a> for testing the code.

Custom Recent Posts Widget

A widget to show recent posts list based on categories or tags

Recent Posts by Category Widget vs Custom Recent Posts Widget