Use butter rather than margarine and white corn meal. The Hodg-somthing Mill white corn meal has a good recipe on the back.
Nonononono. You have to put bacon grease, not butter or margarine, into a cast iron pan and put it into the oven at 450 or 475 degrees while you're mixing up the batter. Do not add sugar to the batter, that's going to produce Yankeefied corn-cake. Pull the (very hot) pan from the oven and pour the batter into the almost-smoking bacon grease. It will sizzle and form a nice crust. Put the pan back into the oven, let the door stay open for a few seconds to reduce the temperature to whatever your recipe specifies as correct baking temperature, and wait.
Also try heating up a little bacon grease in your cast iron skillet and pouring it in with your mix.